Build it and they will come. That had been the message coming out of Bayern Munich’s corridors of power over the international break, from Vincent Kompany, Max Eberl and the higher-ups. If there had been a fortnight’s worth of heel-kicking it was just that; not stewing, not sulking, but a belief that Bayern were ready to unload on an opponent, with the excellence and exhilaration of their play so far this season bound to reach critical mass.
Even for a club constantly walled in by hyperbole and overreaction, the description of the team’s pre-international break run of three games without a win as Kompany’s first “mini-crisis” had felt faintly ludicrous. For starters, they were still unbeaten in the Bundesliga and top of the table. The mood suggested a determination to correct course, rather than recrimination and fury. “For me it isn’t a matter of belief,” Kompany told Bild after Saturday’s 4-0 win over Stuttgart. “It is about what the analysis showed. That we were dominant, that we had many, many, many more chances than the opponents.” Their winless run was hardly against nobodies either, but against champions Leverkusen, then Aston Villa on a Champions League night for the ages and lastly in-form Eintracht Frankfurt.
Bayern should have won all three but didn’t. If outside chatter suggested a team that were too open and sporadically vulnerable, the mood inside the club was markedly different. There was no internal call to trust the process because there was no need to. “Objectively,” Kompany insisted, “it would be so stupid to change everything.”
Those words could have easily applied to Harry Kane as well. If Bayern cut an unusually relaxed posture as a club right now – and there is no better way of summing up Kompany’s influence – the discourse around the England captain has been a little different. He didn’t score during the winless run, a topic of constant media focus in Germany, and Bayern would have undoubtedly preferred him to have given international duty a miss for some much-needed recovery. Yet Kane has been doing what he always has, playing himself into form when others say a break is required. His strike from outside the box just before the hour against Stuttgart was his first goal in 393 minutes, and the avalanche that followed was inevitable. His 23-minute hat-trick sealed the deal long before Kingsley Coman garnished the dish with his first Bundesliga goal in two days under a year.
Stuttgart were never an adversary to be cowed by the challenge. Quite apart from the extent of Sebastian Hoeness’s familiarity with the subject, they are just not that sort of team. Hoeness turned their fortunes around last season not by defensive resolve and opportunism, but by boldness and dominance. He knew exactly what could happen in Saturday evening’s Top-Spiel, and wouldn’t let it submerge their season. Even in last season’s dreamworld, Stuttgart had been here before. They were treated to one of Bayern’s better performances of 2023-24, beaten 3-0 at the Allianz Arena last December, but the severity of the scoreline is the only thing that those two corresponding matches 10 months apart really share in common.
After a week in which Germany’s sporting media has tittered into its sleeve about England appointing one of their countrymen in Thomas Tuchel to chase the 2026 World Cup (and in which English football culture has largely aimed not to analyse too closely what went awry for Tuchel during his chaotic spell in Bavaria), Bayern’s current incarnation typed in bold and underlined exactly how different they are in the early months of Kompany’s reign. In that December 2023 win, a brace from Kane led Tuchel’s Bayern out of the traps, just as happened here. But the pragmatic Tuchel had let Stuttgart be themselves. The visitors had 63% of possession in that game, with Bayern ruthlessly picking them off with their quality and verve.
Kompany’s team? They would never let Stuttgart play on their own terms. The only surprise is that it took such a long period for Bayern to make the breakthrough, perhaps with a touch of the luck that had eluded them for most of the game’s first hour. Kane said afterwards that “nine times out of 10, the goalkeeper probably saves” his opener, with Alexander Nübel getting a hand on the long-range effort but not managing to keep it out.
With Nübel still contracted to Bayern beyond his loan at Stuttgart and a possible successor to Manuel Neuer, some in Germany have wondered if Kane was throwing a little shade in support of one of his senior colleagues. It seems unlikely. We cannot judge Kane on traditional Bayern terms of engagement, just as we cannot with Kompany. This is a coach who will leave out João Palhinha if he wants, despite Bayern taking three transfer windows to snare him as a priority target (though having come on for the injured Aleksandar Pavlovic early on, and the youth product likely out for several weeks with a collarbone injury, more opportunity is on the way). If Bayern are to return to greatness, it will be led by men who have their own way of doing things.
Dortmund 2-1 St Pauli, Hoffenheim 3-1 Bochum, Freiburg 3-1 Augsburg, Leverkusen 2-1 Frankfurt, Borussia Mönchengladbach 3-2 Heidenheim, Mainz 0-2 Leipzig, Bayern Munich 4-0 Stuttgart, Holstein Kiel 0-2 Union Berlin, Wolfsburg 2-4 Werder Bremen
Talking points
• RB Leipzig also remain unbeaten, and level on points with Bayern, after a 2-0 win at Mainz in which Xavi Simons scored a sublime opener and produced his best performance of the season. It is remarkable that Marco Rose’s team have thrived thus far without their key man really looking himself, though the sporting director, Rouven Schröder, emphasised after the game that “the quality of the squad is extremely high and we have many potential starters,” underlining their confidence.
• Even if they share different outlooks, how Borussia Dortmund would like some of that confidence right now. They squeezed past St Pauli on Friday thanks to a late Serhou Guirassy header (and how they rely on the Guinea striker already), and again Nuri Sahin complained about his team’s defending, even though it took Eric Smith’s wonder strike to breach them. “The way we defend really annoys me,” he told Dazn. “We’ve already conceded [poor] goals against Celtic and Union. It’s not acceptable.”
• It was an intense weekend for Leverkusen’s Victor Boniface. He began it by missing a penalty against Frankfurt, then scored the second-half winner as Leverkusen came back from a goal down. Boniface was then involved in a car accident which left the Mercedes he was travelling in written off. Though he fortunately escaped serious injury, there is doubt over whether he will play Wednesday’s Champions League game at Brest.
• Over at Borussia Mönchengladbach, Gerardo Seoane is just about keeping the wolf from the door, with Tim Kleindienst coming through for him by scoring twice as the architect of a 3-2 win over his old club Heidenheim (Kleindienst didn’t celebrate). It has been an incredible few weeks for the striker, having made his Germany debut 10 days ago at the age of 29. Seoane needs him more than ever, having been booed on to the touchline at the start by some fans, with the sporting director Roland Virkus warning that “we can’t sit back because we played a good game”.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bayern Munich | 7 | 17 | 17 |
| 2 | RB Leipzig | 7 | 9 | 17 |
| 3 | Freiburg | 7 | 4 | 15 |
| 4 | Bayer Leverkusen | 7 | 5 | 14 |
| 5 | Union Berlin | 7 | 4 | 14 |
| 6 | Eintracht Frankfurt | 7 | 4 | 13 |
| 7 | Borussia Dortmund | 7 | 2 | 13 |
| 8 | Werder Bremen | 7 | -2 | 11 |
| 9 | Heidenheim | 7 | 1 | 9 |
| 10 | Stuttgart | 7 | 0 | 9 |
| 11 | Borussia M'gladbach | 7 | -2 | 9 |
| 12 | Mainz | 7 | -1 | 8 |
| 13 | Wolfsburg | 7 | -1 | 7 |
| 14 | Hoffenheim | 7 | -4 | 7 |
| 15 | Augsburg | 7 | -8 | 7 |
| 16 | St Pauli | 7 | -6 | 4 |
| 17 | Holstein Kiel | 7 | -12 | 2 |
| 18 | VfL Bochum | 7 | -10 | 1 |
