You know when a driver, frustrated in traffic, finally sees a stretch of open road and blazes off with inappropriate and unwarranted speed into the middle distance? Welcome back, the Bundesliga. German football’s first domestic action in nearly 10 weeks was a dizzying assault on the senses, a torrent of copper from an arcade coin pusher machine, a stream of consciousness from a chatterbox that has been starved of company and has stayed silent all day.
It all started on Friday night in Leipzig, where fireworks were expected in a face off between the league’s two best teams. Instead, the visit of Bayern was more about measure and respectful distances. After a bleak midwinter of fretting over a replacement for the injured Manuel Neuer, the champions bedded in Yann Sommer, signed on Thursday and making his debut, characteristically unruffled, the day after. It was an alarm-free first game for the Swiss goalkeeper, though he could do little about Marcel Halstenberg’s second-half equaliser.
