After the harmless performance in the 3-0 defeat in the top game at Bayer Leverkusen, Thomas Müller clearly criticized the attitude of the FC Bayern players. “I’m missing – now we can quote our Oliver Kahn – some of the balls and this freedom. We have a mentality in our game, especially with the ball,” said the Munich international on Sky. In training, the team shows “significantly better approaches because we are brave because we play football there.”
The 34-year-old emphasized that this was not criticism of coach Thomas Tuchel. “We had enough players of international caliber on the pitch that you don’t need to go to the coach,” he told Sky presenter Patrick Wasserziehr. “What I’m talking about are decisions, especially with the ball, that has something to do with game intelligence, with independence.”
The victory for Bayer was “absolutely deserved,” said Müller. “We can keep the analysis short.” The Leverkusen team, “they just gamble, they play football, they look for solutions,” said the 2014 world champion. He also expects the same from his team. Instead, the Bayern team plays too statically, “from a to b, from b to c, nobody has the freedom to just start playing.”
Tuchel said in the Sky interview that Müller was “not wrong” with his criticism. The coach did not include Müller in the starting line-up; the offensive player was substituted on in the 60th minute. “We had a whole week to prepare for it. We wanted to defend very offensively and not let Leverkusen’s flow of the game get in the way,” said Tuchel: “But we made incredibly bad decisions. He’s right about a lot of things.”
The Bayern coach didn’t want to write off the championship yet despite the poor performance. “We will now do the devil to throw in the towel. Leverkusen had a great chance to create a gap. They did that. For us the gap changes, but the approach doesn’t. We have to keep going, get better ” Tuchel told Sky.
Tuchel said he took responsibility for the tactical plan: “I would do it like that again.” The coach was particularly annoyed by the first goal conceded. “You normally can’t concede a 1-0 goal in a five-man chain. That’s not possible. It’s a clear lapse in concentration. Everyone’s just sleeping. It hurts, a very cheap goal,” said Tuchel, for whom the defeat was too great : “It didn’t feel like a 3-0.”
