Manuel Neuer has been the hero on so many occasions but here, he very nearly found a new way to be so. His 95th minute header from Joshua Kimmich arrowed towards the corner but his opposite number, the outstanding Rafał Gikiewicz, twisted on his line and dived to push it away with his left hand. Seconds later, Neuer lurched at the ball after Alphonso Davies lifted it back in, and Gikiewicz palmed away again, to the fevered acclaim of his teammates. The plaudits belonged to the Polish goalkeeper, rather than the German one, this time.
But since when were Bayern reduced to this? Neuer’s very presence in the Augsburg penalty area, as Bayern Munich sought desperately to slip out of a first defeat of the Bundesliga season, was an admission of desperation. They were not able to but that their highly decorated last line of defence was almost able to make the difference at the other end was jarring. One of the headlines in Bild on Sunday did not miss the opportunity to highlight that Neuer had more efforts on target than Sadio Mané in a deflating loss to local near-neighbours, an hour to the north-west of Munich, who may have established themselves in the top flight but do not have the stature to be described even notionally as rivals.
