Throughout the ups and downs of the Bayern Munich season, the snipes, the setbacks and Bayer Leverkusen’s dazzling form, one fundamental principle has remained largely unchallenged.
Once Thomas Tuchel’s team sniffed out a 12th consecutive Bundesliga title, old muscle memory would kick in. Eventually, in matches like this, they would show their true selves when it mattered most. And they did; not remotely in the way anyone expected.
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Because it was not only a defeat, but also a humiliation; It was not only three important points in the title race, but also an attack on Bayern’s identity. Bayern were overtaken by the faster, hungrier and more creative Bayer Leverkusen team.
Meanwhile, Tuchel’s thinking has been surpassed by Xabi Alonso, who has cemented his status as the sport’s most promising young coach with a dazzlingly creative selection, endearing tactical flourishes and clever use of the bench.
The gap to the top of the league is now five points, but the biggest talking points in Germany in the coming days and weeks will be Bayern’s collapse, Bayern’s crisis and Bayern’s anger.
“I’m very angry, to be honest,” Thomas Müller said in an angry post-match television interview. “To quote Oliver Kahn: What’s missing are the balls. It’s okay to feel pressure, but there needs to be energy and freedom too. This isn’t just about the coach. “Sometimes we need to talk about players.”
And if Bayer Leverkusen always believed, then perhaps this was the moment when the rest of us could believe too. Josip Stanisic opened the scoring, Álex Grimaldo scored the decisive goal at the start of the second half, Florian Wirtz and Granit Xhaka were superb in midfield and Jeremie Frimpong scored spectacularly in stoppage time. But what sets this Leverkusen team apart is how little they rely on individual moments of quality.
It defends and attacks as a unit, interchangeable pieces moving at interesting angles with relentless pressure. Here Alonso went without a recognized striker. Amine Adli played as a false nine completed by Nathan Tella on the right. It was another surprising decision by Stanisic regarding Frimpong. Alonso talks a lot about flexibility, and this performance – artistic and elusive, rehearsed in the right places and durable – is because of that.
The result was a game with all the textural quality of a David Lynch film: full of intrigue and red herrings, strange motifs and hidden layers of meaning. Why were fans throwing candy onto the field? Why was Stanisic the only player on his team who did not celebrate his goal? Why were Bayern’s full-backs playing on the opposite side? So why was there a house fan dressed as the pope?
Leaders Internazionale beat Roma 4-2 in Serie A on Saturday, ending Daniele De Rossi’s winning start in the capital despite falling behind the home side at half-time.
Inter increased their lead over second-place Juventus to seven points, ahead of Massimiliano Allegri’s visiting Udinese on Monday. They still have one game left after their trip to Saudi Arabia for the Italian Super Cup in January.
Roma, who have won their last three games under De Rossi after replacing José Mourinho in January, avoided the traps and Stephan El Shaarawy came close to scoring in the first minute but his close-range shot was extravagantly cleared away by Inter. Goalkeeper Yann Somer.
Instead, Francesco Acerbi headed into the area to put Inter ahead in the 17th minute when Roma’s Romelu Lukaku tipped the ball into the corner; This goal remained valid after a lengthy VAR review for offside control.
Roma fought back and Gianluca Mancini nodded a free-kick towards goal before the half-hour mark before El Shaarawy put the home team narrowly ahead, his shot from a tight angle hitting both posts then rebounding.
However, Marcus Thuram equalized for Inter with a low shot for the first time in the fourth minute of the second half, and Roma’s Angelino sent the ball into his own goal, allowing the visitors to take the lead in the 56th minute.
Alessandro Bastoni scored a nice square pass from substitute Marko Arnautovic during stoppage time to score a point for the visiting team.
Earlier on Saturday, Lazio moved into sixth place with a 3-1 win over relegation-threatened Cagliari.
Some of these questions were easier to answer than others. The naps, which delayed kick-off by eight minutes, were part of a long-running protest by fans across Germany against a proposal to sell a stake in the Bundesliga’s media rights to private investment. The fancy dress was for Karneval weekend. Stanisic is currently on loan at Bayern. And perhaps Tuchel’s decision to play Sacha Boey at left-back was an attempt to counter the pace of the unavailable Frimpong.
Thus, Bayern was defeated not only in practice but also in theory. Perhaps one of the reasons why their defenses seemed so vague was that it was never quite clear what they were trying to defend. Perhaps one of the reasons why Harry Kane’s name remained so secret was that Bayern had no idea how to include him in the game. The result was three goals with varying degrees of head loss.
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The first for Stanisic came as Bayern Munich fell completely asleep in the second phase of the game following a save from Manuel Neuer. For Grimaldo, the latter came as a simple give-and-take; Aleksandar Pavlovic could not follow the run. The third came at the end of injury time when Neuer was still ready for a corner (why?) and Frimpong curled the ball brilliantly from around 30 yards.
Frankly, the margin could have been even wider. Bayern barely had a good chance all night. And of course this is only February and Leverkusen have never won a title in their history and nothing is set in stone yet. But while it is too early to judge Bayern’s period of dominance, the situation has never been this unstable.