An the touchline, one of the sport’s fastest strikers turned around and sprinted away from Josip Stanišić. He didn’t have to pull off a complicated trick that night to overwhelm Stanišić, the 22-year-old FC Bayern Munich defender. He just had to run. Karim Adeyemi can do that. And the only reason his sprint and cross weren’t followed by a goal was because center forward Anthony Modeste swung his foot in the six-yard box at the wrong moment in that 83rd minute.
This is what it looked like in October 2022 in Dortmund.
Now, in March 2023, this scene from the Westfalenstadion was present again when Julian Nagelsmann, the football coach of FC Bayern Munich, announced in the press conference on Tuesday that he would probably field Josip Stanišić in what was initially the most important game of the season. The coach had to replace his regular Benjamin Pavard, who saw a yellow-red card in the first part of the round of 16 against Paris Saint-Germain (final score: 1-0 for FC Bayern).
And so one could ask oneself with a view to the decisive duel in the Champions League: If a defender is already overwhelmed with Karim Adeyemi, what is he then with Kylian Mbappé?
“Not everyone believed him capable of that”
With 66 minutes gone, what is perhaps the sport’s fastest forward spun on the touchline – and Stanišić failed to sprint away after all. He already failed to lup the ball past the defender. For a moment, Mbappé and Stanišić jostled for the ball, which finally went wide. The referee’s decision: throw-in for FC Bayern.
This is what it looks like in March 2023 in Munich.
Late Wednesday evening, when the game was over a few minutes, Julian Nagelsmann gave one of many interviews. “Sensational,” he said, referring to defender Josip Stanišić, who on right-back, Mbappé’s side, helped his team win 2-0 (goals: Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting, 61st minute and Serge Gnabry , 89th minute) and advanced to the quarterfinals.
And of the sentences that the coach said about his defender in this interview, one was particularly interesting: “Not everyone believed him capable of playing such a game.” Why? Because it could be interpreted not only as an answer to the Stanišić skeptics, but also to the Nagelsmann skeptics.
It has now been almost a year since Julian Nagelsmann lost in his first season with Munich in the quarter-finals to Villarreal, then seventh in the Spanish league. He had the better players – and yet not the better team. It was his biggest defeat as a Bayern Munich coach, maybe even as a football coach.
And even if this apparently did not change the trust of his superiors, they lost their bet for the first time in the first season. They know that their players’ talent will sometimes be inferior to the Champions League investor clubs, but they are counting on their coach’s tactics to be superior.
On this Wednesday evening, the bet paid off for the first time. The coach used a three-man chain with Stanišić, Dayot Upamecano and Matthijs de Ligt – and all his players made sure not to start pressing in the PSG penalty area. He didn’t want Kylian Mbappé to sprint, Lionel Messi not to dribble. He, who usually thinks the game offensively, thought it defensively this time. And 90 minutes later it was clear to almost everyone in the stadium: he didn’t have the better players – but he still had the better team.
At least at this point one should consider what would have happened if the Portuguese midfielder Vitinha had shot the ball a little harder or a little higher in the 38th minute. The goal was empty because goalkeeper Yann Sommer dribbled in the penalty area – a necessary reminder that he is not Manuel Neuer.
Matthijs de Ligt tackled Vitinha’s shot in front of the line. No goal by Vitinha. None from Messi. And none from Mbappé either. They couldn’t – and at some point they didn’t want to anymore. When the ball rolled into Sommer’s penalty area in the 87th minute and the score was 1-0, he didn’t grab it with his hands but with his foot to gain time. Both Mbappé and Messi, who were standing nearby, saw that. But they did: nothing.
It is quite possible that they will no longer play together in the Champions League. And if that were the case, it would be the right punchline for this PSG project: the investors from Qatar could buy the two best football players in the world – but not the best team. But they probably don’t care, because these players guarantee the most important thing: attention, always and everywhere. When Mbappé and Messi walked out of the stadium in Munich, a large group of people was waiting on the team bus, screaming as loudly as they would probably ever do for a Bayern player.
In Munich, the focus is on the coach. At least that’s how he sees it himself. And you could certainly understand it as an attempt at media criticism when Julian Nagelsmann suddenly said in his late hour press conference that he was “very much in the media focus”, that he was taking the “shit” on himself – and that it was “mostly shit”.
On that evening, when he had achieved his greatest victory as a FC Bayern coach, probably even as a football coach, he suspected that everything could change again in April when the quarter-finals are due. And although not all possible opponents have been determined yet, there is – no shit – reason for cautious optimism: FC Villarreal are not there this season.
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