Bayern Munich have lost their aura

This game should not have been close. Yes, Borussia Dortmund are second in the table, but FC Bayern outclass them man-for-man, with the sole exception of Nico Schlotterbeck. BVB have been playing two games a week non-stop for two weeks, and came into this off the back of a humiliating loss to Atalanta in the Champions League.

So why did Bayern Munich have so much trouble with them?

Fans of the club will have to look themselves in the mirror. This is not the team that was turning heads in the first part of the season. This is not the team everyone thinks will win the Champions League. This team looks tired, disoriented, and struggles to get out of 2nd gear.

When was the last time Bayern Munich played a full 45 minutes of football without dropping quality or intensity? Maybe against RB Leipzig all the way back in January. Since then, every game has been a slog, with individual quality often being the difference. Players like Harry Kane and Michael Olise are left to pick up the pieces. The system isn’t pulling its weight.

Fans have been subjected to concentration errors, lapses in judgement, poor passing, and mediocre finishing — all compounded by a general sluggishness. In many ways, the team looks like a shell of its former self. The football is often slow and messy. Penalties make the difference more and more often.

The question is, what will Vincent Kompany do about it? It all starts with the issues at the back…

Why the defense doesn’t work any more

Let’s explain something very simple. Bayern Munich are not a traditional defensive team. So, how does the defense work — or rather, how should it work?

It comes down to gegenpressing.

To many Bayern fans, Kompany is a more control-oriented manager than Hansi Flick, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Vincent Kompany’s team lives and dies by the press. When possession is lost, it must be regained as soon as possible. That way, defense becomes offense, as the turnover results in a counter. Sounds simple, right?

That’s the problem. It is too simple, and thus becomes an Achilles heel. If teams beat the first man, things get out of hand very fast. Bayern Munich have no plan B if the press if beaten. There is no defensive shape to fall back into. When an opponent like Dortmund manage to make more than two passes with the ball, they will usually end up in the final third.

Runners don’t get tracked, because the system is designed to prevent the runner from getting the pass in the first place. The player who passes to the runner, that’s the player who’s supposed to get closed down by the press. So if the press fails, everything downstream is affected. There’s no defensive shape, so the players keep their man-to-man style of defending. However, man-to-man styles break down when there’s no pressing. So once the press is beaten, it’s open season on the Bayern goal.

This is a systemic issue that Vincent Kompany needs to fix. His team was incredible at winning duels in the first half of the season, but that’s not true any more. Maybe teams found a trick to bypass the press, but it’s more likely that the intensity he demands isn’t sustainable. So Bayern need a plan B for when the press fails. Unless that plan B materializes, many MANY more goals will be conceded, especially against better opposition.

Niko Kovač makes things miserable for everyone

Games like this demonstrate why Niko Kovač has such a bad reputation despite being a relatively successful coach.

Kovač set the game up to maximize disruption, and it worked. There was no flow, no rhythm to how the football was played. BVB players were instructed to make obscene challenges, then slow the game down at every stoppage. Emre Can acted out a scene from Hamlet every ten minutes. Nico Schlotterbeck almost took out Stanišić’s ankle. Then he almost did the same to Olise.

The ref let it all go, so BVB got to settle in and neutralize any attempt at buildup play. But that’s the thing. They focused completely on stopping Bayern, but didn’t give the same thought to their own game. Once Dortmund had the ball it was just — chaotic, really. They didn’t make quality passes or mount dangerous attacks. They focused on beating the press, then getting the ball to Adeyemi up top.

They were, frankly, not very pleasant to watch. They attacked when the press failed, and their goals came from Bayern blunders, but it was all opportunistic. BVB had 80,000 fans behind them, and never tried to be the protagonist. Even when they were 2-1 down and chasing, they kept the same negative attitude.

To be fair to Kovač, it almost worked. You could hardly expect his Dortmund team to go toe to toe with this Bayern (out of form as it is). But this sort of mentality is why no one likes him. Why his teams are so hard to watch, even when they win. And when they don’t win, there’s one big question — what was it all for?

That’s the trouble with these pragmatists; it was the same with Tuchel at Bayern. They gamble everything on the result. It’s all they have. So when the tactics fail, the suffering is especially acute. Football is entertainment, at the end of the day, and this type of football is not entertaining for anyone.

An advertisement for the Bundesliga? Maybe not

The two biggest teams in Germany met in a clash to decide the title race, and it ended in a pulse-pounding 3-2 with goals back and forth and both teams squandering a lead. This is the type of action and drama you never get from a typical “big” game in the English Premier League.

But there was something missing. It was not long ago that the name Der Klassiker meant you were gearing up to watch some of the best football a European league has to offer. This game… was not that. It was a sloppy, drawn-out affair, with neither team really playing particularly good football. Yes, it was end-to-end, but that was a function of the lack of quality on display rather than a testament to it.

This game was an entertaining one for the neutrals. But it was a popcorn flick, a B-movie, something Marvel might produce. It’s nothing compared to watching Jupp vs Klopp or Pep vs Tuchel back in the golden days of this fixture. Those games were cinema.

Sadly, the Bundesliga seems to have lost that cinematic quality in recent years. This game just proves it.

You know who could have helped?

Sorry to push the Thomas Müller agenda in the Big ‘26, but his presence was sorely missed.

Müller is a specialist at beating Dortmund, and if he were still on the team, a lot of Bayern’s problems would be fixed. Let’s recap:

Honestly, the fact that he’s not here is a terrible shame. Vincent Kompany has blood on his hands for what he did with Thomas Müller. He needs to win a Champions League to make up for it.

Miscellaneous observations

If you are looking for more Bayern Munich and German national team coverage, check out the latest episodes of Bavarian Podcast Works, which you can get on Acast, Spotify, Apple, or any leading podcast distributor…

Sign up for a user account and get: