They played like a team cowered by the occasion. Simple touches became pinball ricochets into the crowd, straight five-yard passes things of impossibility. On the bench, the coach watched on in horror, occasionally throwing his hands up in the air, driven half-mad by his side’s incompetence. Or was it the other way around? He later admitted the anxiousness had spread from him to the players, like a nasty virus.
We have seen it all before, as long as most can remember. Borussia Dortmund came, faltered and lost in Munich for the ninth time in a row in the league, lucky that their collapse did not translate into something approaching double figures. And yet, the non-contest at Allianz Arena offered up a strange twist. It was Bayern, not the visitors, who had looked so poor in the opening minutes and Thomas Tuchel, not Edin Terzic, was going nuts on the touchline.
“I was very nervous,” the 49-year-old said after the final whistle. “Maybe my team sensed that because we started very nervously, making many technical mistakes. We looked very sloppy.” Was it the abrupt change of management last week, a move that seemed to have split the dressing room, and all the brouhaha that went with it? Before the game, Sky Germany pundit and former Bayern legend Lothar Matthaus accused CEO Oliver Kahn of behaving in a classless manner and not telling the truth over the timing of Julian Nagelsmann’s sacking, causing an angry spat live on television.
Maybe it was simply the uncertainty that comes with a team trying to do things differently in the space of a few days and not quite knowing whether it would all come off in the most relevant fixture in the domestic calendar.
Dortmund, by contrast, played with the swagger of 10 unbeaten league games and took control of the game, with Bayern unable to exert any meaningful pressure. The problem was that impressive spell only lasted 13 minutes. Once Gregor Kobel catastrophically mishit a clearance into his own net — Leroy Sane could have had the final touch but let the ball trickle into the empty net so as not to disturb the moment’s sublime absurdity — Bayern regained their composure and Dortmund lost theirs.
Two close-range finishes from Thomas Muller, whose striker’s instincts were compared to a “truffle hog” by Tuchel, put the match beyond Borussia after just 23 minutes. Bayern could have pushed on to utterly destroy their hapless opponents but they were content to play cat and mouse with them, letting them live just enough to add two meaningless goals late on in a 4-2 defeat. “We could have easily scored three or four more goals,” Joshua Kimmich said, without exaggeration.
Nerves aside, it later transpired Dortmund’s early dominance had been partially by design, too. While Tuchel’s four-at-the-back system signalled a return to pre- Nagelsmann basics — “we want players to play in the positions they feel most comfortable in,” Tuchel said — the tactical setup was closer to Carlo Ancelotti’s “let’s do more with less approach”.
Bayern hardly pressed high and instead settled into a midfield 4-1-4-1 block, waiting for a stung BVB to fall into the trap. Again and again, they exposed them on the break. Only a few poor final balls and errant runs offside came between them and an even more demoralising defeat for Dortmund.
Leon Goretzka was reluctant to talk too much of the new manager’s instructions — “It wouldn’t be clever to reveal that,” said the midfielder — but Tuchel had kept things simple by splitting his team in half. He told them they should play with five attackers and five defenders, with the two sections protecting each other.
Bayern took a while to get their act together but the ease of their win was as much a result of Tuchel’s anti-concept concept as Dortmund’s brittleness. Everyone knew what they were doing and they did so collectively because it was easy enough for everyone to understand, even for a side that had only met their new coach 48 hours earlier.
But that is only the beginning. Muller, Goretzka and Kimmich were all highly self-critical of the performance, bemoaning easy mistakes and a lack of focus in the final 20 minutes after a flurry of substitutions. Tuchel agreed with that assessment but was in a forgiving mood, the odd exasperated outcry on the bench aside. “A lot of things can improve but this result will give us a push,” he said.
It will take more time until a fuller picture will emerge because Dortmund did not provide a meaningful challenge; Freiburg, one of the most awkward teams in the league, might be better suited in the cup on Tuesday and next Saturday’s league encounter. “It doesn’t quite feel like 1000 per cent my team yet,” Tuchel admitted. “And I still don’t know my way around (Allianz Arena) yet either.” He was generous to his predecessor, referencing “the work and passion” of Nagelsmann and his staff and vowing that he wanted to “finish this thing for Julian”, too.
And what of Dortmund? BVB sporting director Sebastian Kehl did a stern job projecting confidence without ignoring the scale of the defeat. “Compactness and discipline were missing today, you can’t perform like that in Munich,” he said.
“But the championship wasn’t decided yet. We are Borussia, we will get up again. This isn’t done.” There indeed is all to play for. But it did not feel like that on Saturday night. If this was a glimpse of the future of Bayern under Tuchel, it was terrifying for the competition.
(Top photo: Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)
