How could this week have got worse for Bayern Munich? After two meek losses on the road that continue to threaten a profound effect on their season, with barely a shot of substance fired in anger in that time, some would have suggested a bit of late weekend comfort eating to mask their troubles, away at Bochum. Mischievous fate, however, had one last prank to play on them before Monday came.
Visitors to the Allianz Arena in recent years have long since remarked on the goal music, a concept not to all tastes at the best of times. The indignation of inevitable concession at Bayern’s home is greeted by the jaunt of the can-can, played for just that little bit too long to rub it in that yes, your efforts are futile and that yes, you are now very much in the mud.
The only other club in the Bundesliga to lean on Offenbach to commemorate scoring? That would be VfL Bochum. Their Vonovia Ruhrstadion could not be more different from Bayern’s home, a low-roofed, wild-spirited chocolate box of a ground which is about one-third of the capacity of the champions’ lair. So what better way to compound the glumness of another setback in Bayern’s current run – “a horror movie that doesn’t end,” as Bochum native Leon Goretzka put it after the match – than 43 seconds of the can-can to signal Takuma Asano’s smartly taken first-half equaliser? Such is Bayern’s gloom at present that it never felt like the bottom of the well. Being merrily taunted with their own celebration music (three times, in the end) simply capped a shambolic week for Thomas Tuchel and his players.
That this was the second time Bayern had gone down in Bochum, a club with a tiny fraction of their means, in three seasons – even if they twice have beaten them 7-0 in the interim, in this fixture last season and earlier this term at Allianz Arena – may suggest more of a long-term malaise, but the present is inescapable for now. Tuchel often does his best to avoid the reality, and was widely ridiculed for his post-match touchline interview with Dazn in which he said his team’s 3-2 defeat “wasn’t deserved” and pointed to Bayern’s 3.4 xG. Yet even the coach who decried that “Murphy’s law applied today, [because] whatever could go wrong did go wrong” was forced to admit that retaining the Bundesliga is “right now not that realistic’, with an eight-point gap having developed behind a rampant Bayer Leverkusen.
This is the first time in nearly nine years that Bayern have lost three in a row and the last occasion, in May 2015, contained two Bundesliga defeats that hardly registered, with the title long since in the bag, either side of Lionel Messi’s infamous dismantling of Jérôme Boateng in a Champions League semi-final at the Camp Nou. The widespread meme-ing of that never sat well with this column, with a certain ridiculousness hanging over the idea of mocking a player for being hoodwinked by the world’s best.
It is hard to imagine any of this week’s culprits getting that close to greatness right now. Profligate in Wednesday’s miserable defeat at Lazio, Leroy Sané came on with Bayern 2-1 down on Sunday along with new signing Bryan Zaragoza, for Joshua Kimmich and Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting, to try to inject some verve into this latest stalling. But, as Kicker’s Mario Krischel put it, their flair was more than counter-balanced by them “not taking part in the defensive [side of the] game.” And Bayern defended terribly. For the second successive game, Dayot Upamecano gave away a penalty and received a red card in the same action – in both cases, it was converted for a winner, by Ciro Immobile and Bochum’s excellent Kevin Stöger. To cap it all Kimmich, who sat on the bench with a face like thunder after being replaced (after a poor performance in which he was complicit in Asano’s goal), had to be pulled apart from Tuchel’s assistant Zsolt Löw as they rowed at fulltime.
As things stand this current Bayern crop would be grateful to reach the last eight of a competition their club has won six times, let alone have the honour of being beaten single-handedly by one of the world’s greatest in the final four. This is not the Bayern of 2015 and Tuchel is not Pep Guardiola but perhaps even more pertinently, the current incarnation of this proud club are nowhere near the monster of efficiency with which the name has become synonymous. If it was anywhere near that, Tuchel would surely have been looking for alternative employment some time ago. That Bayern are unable and/or unwilling to act even, with their campaign falling apart at the seams, is an indictment of what a fundamentally weak institution they are right now, far from the stability of former years.
Even Harry Kane is indicative of the problems. The move for Kane has, in one sense, been a roaring success. He scored his 25th Bundesliga goal of the season here (albeit missing sitters which would have made it 2-0 or 3-3 respectively on either side of it, but that is hardly the main issue) but the feeling lingers that his signing is just not the sort of deal that a functional Bayern would do. Hugely impressive on and off the field, Kane has obscured a plethora of problems with an unbalanced squad. England’s captain deserves a better supporting cast and, one way or another, should get one next season.
Tuchel will remain for now because there is no real alternative, no decisive next move. There is little prospect of salvaging this season in a meaningful way so it is, perhaps, better to hope for an uptick in the current trough of form (which is certainly possible) rather than writing the whole exercise off with the Bundesliga and the Champions League still in play, at least theoretically. Yet he will surely be gone when Bayern can upgrade. He was leaned on too heavily in last summer’s transfer strategy, with a vacuum of power above. That must be sealed before Bayern can move forward.
Köln 0-1 Werder Bremen, Heidenheim 1-2 Bayer Leverkusen, Hoffenheim 0-1 Union Berlin, Mainz 1-0 Augsburg, Darmstadt 1-2 Stuttgart, Wolfsburg 1-1 Borussia Dortmund, Leipzig 2-0 Mönchengladbach, Freiburg 3-3 Frankfurt, Bochum 3-2 Bayern Munich
Talking points
• Leverkusen continue to show all the swagger (and the nerve) that Bayern lack, eking out a win at a stubborn Heidenheim with Jeremie Frimpong again decisive, netting the opening goal right on half-time, before on-loan Mo Dahoud sealed it late on. Even the cancellation of their flight north after the game, leaving Xabi Alonso’s men to a 400km bus journey back and writing off their Saturday night, couldn’t dampen spirits.
• Spirited was a word you might use to describe the continued protests at private equity investment, with further lengthy stoppages to all games. Fans at Köln and Rostock this time set remote control cars on the pitch to disrupt the matches. One amusing episode in Cologne involved the Werder Bremen substitute Justin Njinmah unsuccessfully attempting to boot one of the cars off the field, though he did later come on and score the winning goal. The inconvenience caused by the peaceful protests is real, and both Niclas Füllkrug and Emre Can made plain their frustration after Borussia Dortmund’s 1-1 draw at Wolfsburg. Meaningful dialogue between the authorities and supporter groups is surely inevitable to break the deadlock, with Köln ultras calling in a statement for a re-vote “which must be done publicly and not in secret”.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bayer Leverkusen | 22 | 42 | 58 |
| 2 | Bayern Munich | 22 | 36 | 50 |
| 3 | Stuttgart | 22 | 23 | 46 |
| 4 | Borussia Dortmund | 22 | 17 | 41 |
| 5 | RB Leipzig | 22 | 20 | 40 |
| 6 | Eintracht Frankfurt | 22 | 6 | 33 |
| 7 | Werder Bremen | 22 | -3 | 29 |
| 8 | Freiburg | 22 | -11 | 29 |
| 9 | Hoffenheim | 22 | -3 | 27 |
| 10 | Heidenheim | 22 | -7 | 27 |
| 11 | VfL Bochum | 22 | -15 | 25 |
| 12 | Wolfsburg | 22 | -8 | 24 |
| 13 | Union Berlin | 22 | -14 | 24 |
| 14 | Augsburg | 22 | -9 | 23 |
| 15 | Borussia M'gladbach | 22 | -7 | 22 |
| 16 | Cologne | 22 | -21 | 16 |
| 17 | Mainz | 22 | -18 | 15 |
| 18 | Darmstadt | 22 | -28 | 12 |
