EFor a good hour the red bomber jacket had been hiding under the roof of the FC Bayern bank, or rather the wearer of the red jacket. Julian Nagelsmann held back for a long time and didn’t dance excitedly up and down in the coaching zone as he often does. The coach of the Bundesliga leaders only showed up occasionally. It wasn’t until the last half hour that he couldn’t stay in his seat anymore. He kept calling out to the pitch, pushing his players and trying to organize and put things in order.
There was a lot to do in FC Bayern’s 3-2 win over RB Leipzig in a high-quality Bundesliga game that Nagelsmann later described as “intense”. For the first time since the end of November, Bayern played in front of 10,000 spectators in the Munich Arena, and they saw a win that the coach thought “wasn’t mega-deserved, but it wasn’t undeserved either”. In the end, the team that made fewer mistakes in the build-up game won – or simply took advantage of the opponent’s better. “It would have been better,” said Leipzig’s Konrad Laimer. “It just hurts when you lose like that.”
The game was “of course a bit more special from a personal point of view than other games might be,” Nagelsmann said before the duel with his former club. However, the Munich coach saw no reason to change his line-up and tactics compared to the previous game at Hertha BSC. Again he relied on a three-man chain and entrusted the offensive wingers Kingsley Coman and Serge Gnabry with defensive tasks – and initially did without the former Leipzig Dayot Upamecano and Marcel Sabitzer.
Leipzig is looking for playful solutions
However, it was not to be expected that the people of Leipzig would appear as reserved as the people of Berlin. After a weak first half of the season, the Saxons had regained their self-confidence under new coach Domenico Tedesco, were the only Bundesliga club to win their first four league games this year and were thus again close to the Champions League places in the table. RB was looking for playful solutions – and that went wrong early on.
In the 12th minute, Willi Orban decided to play a short pass from defence, but Corentin Tolisso followed Nagelsmann’s instruction to disrupt early on perfectly at that moment. The Frenchman intervened, played the ball to Robert Lewandowski, who finished with a low shot. RB goalkeeper Peter Gulasci parried, but couldn’t hold on to the ball – and Thomas Müller dusted off for Munich’s lead.
This goal was like a little wake-up call for Leipzig to attack Bayern more directly and with more speed. This was also possible because the league leaders let their opponents do it. And so began a small personal duel between Dani Olmo and Manuel Neuer. In the space of two minutes, the Spaniard made two shots and was denied twice by the Bayern goalkeeper. It was André Silva who, after Bayern lost the ball in the build-up game, brought Leipzig back into play when he pushed the ball into the net from close range, past the legs of Benjamin Pavard and Niklas Süle on the line (27th). . “An egg goal,” says Neuer.
But Leipzig didn’t even think about changing their tactics, acted far too openly and were initially lucky that Munich “played forward much too quickly”, as Nagelsmann noted. “We wanted to finish every attack,” rather than build patiently. Only Müller scored in this phase, but the headed goal was not counted because the video assistant had rightly seen a foul play beforehand. It worked just before the break whistle. In the fourth attempt Lewandowski finally hit the goal, headed after a precise cross from Coman to make it 2-1.
But that wasn’t it for Bayern. As in the first half before the equalizer and as so often this season, they allowed themselves the next momentous loss of ball in the build-up game in the 53rd minute. This time Nordi Nkunku was the beneficiary, completing the counterattack with a shot through Neuer’s legs to make it 2-2. Bayern’s response was not as long in coming this time as it was after the 1-1 draw. On the contrary: Gulacsi initially helped because he sloppily played the ball up front and it therefore ended up at Bayern, then Josko Gvardiol deflected Serge Gnabry’s cross from the right into his own goal to make it 3-2 for Munich (58th minute). ).
Bayern tried to score a fourth goal but missed a couple of good chances. The actions became less precise again in the final phase, on both sides, however. Leipzig didn’t give up, but only had a very good opportunity to travel home from Munich with a point thanks to Emil Fosberg.
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