After the next frustrating game in the Munich frost, Oliver Kahn stood in the interview zone in a thick wool coat and described the extremely unsatisfactory situation of his Bavarians in a surprisingly calm tone.
No rumble! No volcano(h)n eruption! And yet after the next 1: 1 (1: 0) in the top Bundesliga game of the first round against Eintracht Frankfurt inside the Allianz Arena, you could feel every second of the four-minute appearance of CEO Kahn: He was boiling Soccer wuterich of earlier goalkeeper times.
“We’re still top of the table after this matchday, that’s positive,” Kahn began his assessment, which turned negative in the same breath. 1-1 in Leipzig, 1-1 against Cologne, 1-1 against Frankfurt – that’s not Bayern-like at all: “We didn’t start the second half of the season well,” said Kahn. The subscription champions did not win eight of 18 games this season.
Dangerous knockout weeks
Looking at the February dates threatens even more winter frustration. Bayern are rumbling into dangerous knockout weeks, starting with the DFB Cup round of 16 on Wednesday at the always awkward FSV Mainz 05 and the first part of the Champions League cracker against Paris Saint-Germain with world stars Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé on April 14 . February. FC Bayern’s season could be decided early on. “There’s a lot at stake now,” Kahn remarked, realizing in the middle of a sentence how short the period of time for crisis management was.
Coach Julian Nagelsmann downplayed the current situation as a “result crisis” and gave the impression that with a few corrections such as more “accelerating the game” and more focus when attacking and defending, the pressure situation could be overcome. “I can handle the pressure, don’t worry,” he told a reporter who asked him about his resistance to pressure.
The results are suspiciously reminiscent of last autumn, when Bayern even went without a win four times in a row. But that’s exactly where Kahn objected. He doesn’t like the Bayern team in 2023. “Objectively, it’s obvious that there are two teams. That was the team before the World Cup. And now that’s the team after the World Cup. The difference to autumn is obvious, we had an incredible number of chances to score and just didn’t score. Now that’s not the case.” The lightness is gone, victory after victory followed before the World Cup.
Stuck on the offensive
Leroy Sané’s 1-0 was one of the few attacking moves worth seeing. After the equalization of Frankfurt’s league top scorer Randal Kolo Muani, there was no more team reaction. “We don’t have goal chance after goal chance,” warned Kahn. He needs to speak. “We will now take our time to analyze why we are not getting our horsepower on the road at the moment,” announced Kahn.
The bosses are getting impatient. They had given the German national players a long holiday after the botched World Cup. That’s why Kahn and sports director Hasan Salihamidzic reacted sourly to Serge Gnabry’s fashion trip to the restart when they expected full focus on the Munich title jobs again. “We are now demanding performance,” said Kahn on Saturday – basta!
The cup evening in Mainz suits him just fine. “Thank God. That’s exactly what the team needs now. The knockout game comes at exactly the right time. We have to really step on the gas now,” said Kahn. Do the stars deliver under pressure to win? Wrapped up warmly, the reservists went to the club’s grounds for player training on Sunday morning, while the regulars, such as the uninspired Jamal Musiala, signed autographs for the fans.
Thomas Müller, whose return to the starting eleven did not work wonders, said what must now be the program at Bayern. “We wanted this knot bursting against Frankfurt, of course. The points advantage is melting. We have to start our anger engine now.” Kahn will be happy to hear these words from Ur-Bayern Müller.
