Julian Nagelsmann has missed this kind of competition and so, in recent months, has the Bundesliga. This felt just like a Saturday night Top-Spiel should, a meeting of minds, of wills, of guts. RB Leipzig have not shone this season like the upstarts they have been since promotion in 2016 – they have been “playing below their potential … it’s no secret”. as Thomas Müller put it at full-time – but they came to Bayern Munich with what a lot of teams leave at home. Hunger and bravery.
On a weekend when Borussia Dortmund underlined that their nominal title challenge is barely even that, this was a ray of light tentatively pointing towards a more competitive future race at the top. Germany’s football critics relished it too. “The fact that [Domenico] Tedesco’s team had stood up to Bayern for so long with a courageous and attacking approach was remarkable,” wrote Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Philipp Schneider.
