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Louise Thomas
Editor
A first for Vincent Kompany and yet a very familiar experience. He became accustomed to defeats involving a team in claret and blue last season. There were 24 of them for Burnley in the Premier League alone, two to Aston Villa.
A maiden loss as Bayern Munich manager made it a hat-trick of setbacks to Villa in 14 months. That Unai Emery was one of the host of managers Bayern considered in the strange saga that followed the announcement that Thomas Tuchel would depart – including persisting with Tuchel himself – before alighting on one of the oddest appointments in their history. That Emery has an extraordinary European pedigree may have helped Villa beat Bayern 1-0; the manager in his 189th game of continental competition defeated the manager coaching his second.
Emery has the track record, Kompany the job that seems to afford a realistic chance of winning the Champions League. The Villa manager reacted to what may become the most famous win of his reign by saying: “Maybe we can get the first eight positions [in the standings].” If Bayern don’t, it would represent a failure.
A loss at this stage to anyone seemed to be just that: Bayern had not lost from a Champions League group game since going down 3-0 to Emery’s Paris Saint-Germain in 2017. “It is not a group stage,” disputed Kompany. “It is a table, a league.” Some may concur: whichever, Tuchel took 16 points from six matches last autumn, Julian Nagelsmann the maximum 18 in each of the two previous years.
Kompany will be judged against them; against Emery, too, if only for one night. The Spaniard’s attention to detail yielded a winner, with Manuel Neuer caught in no-man’s land as Jhon Duran lobbed him. “In the analysis we have of them, we were speaking of how usually the position of Neuer is always high,” Emery said. It was a product, too, of a decision to adopt more direct tactics, knowing Kompany’s Bayern could go one against one or two against two at the back: it had almost threatened to prove Dayot Upamecano’s undoing against Ollie Watkins, before Duran came on to expose the high defensive line.
And it meant the game-changing substitution came from Emery. Kompany had the stronger bench to call upon – Jamal Musiala, Leroy Sane, Joao Palhinha, Matthys Tel and Leon Goretzka were used; Thomas Muller, Raphael Guerreiro and Eric Dier not. Perhaps he shouldn’t have taken off Michael Olise. There was surprise he didn’t start Jamal Musiala, though he attributed that to illness.
Kompany had started at Bayern with six straight wins featuring 29 goals. His maiden Champions League game as a manager ended in a 9-2 win. Yet Bayern managers have the capacity to chalk up victories and goals against lesser opponents.
They can get judged instead in the more defining matches. Kompany’s toughest week to date has been his worst. Bayern drew 1-1 with Bayer Leverkusen and lost 1-0 to Villa; he was held by Xabi Alonso, a manager who ranked ahead of him on their shortlist. Bayern had the chances to win both: indeed Leverkusen had an expected goals tally of only 0.09. Neuer conceded to two spectacular strikes, from Robert Andrich and Duran. Bayern nevertheless won neither match.
“Over two games against two games that are rated very highly we conceded very few chances,” said Kompany. “What we usually do so well which is scoring goals. I am convinced we will score goals more often than not.”
Harry Kane’s record alone suggests they will. Yet Bayern’s task is to be more than flat-track bullies, Kompany’s is to outwit managers of the calibre of Alonso and Emery. In one respect, he has merely followed in Tuchel’s footsteps: Bayern’s previous Champions League defeat was to Real Madrid, inflicted by another striking super-sub, in Joselu.
But it was a semi-final. They were two minutes away from reaching the final. The standards have been set high. Bayern played four games against English opposition last season, beating Manchester United home and away, drawing at Arsenal, winning a quarter-final second leg in Bavaria. They tend to overcome English clubs not named Manchester City or Liverpool. Not this time.
“This defeat doesn’t decide the competition, so we keep going,” said Kompany. The format means he is probably right but director of sport Max Eberl sounded more critical. “You mustn’t lose these games,” he said. “We have to learn from this, that we can’t win at this level by giving any less than 100 percent. We didn’t manage to capitalise on what few chances we had. We knew the stakes were high here.”
It is Bayern so the stakes are always high. For Kompany, relegated with Burnley, failing upwards to one of the European superpowers, going from a club who lost most weeks to one where every setback prompts an inquest, the last few days may have been an unwanted reality check.
