Champions aren’t flawless. It’s just you get glimpses of their flaws, but never all of them at once. They are exposed, instead, in fickle flashes and brief bolts – like shadows you think you saw in the mirror – before they are gone.
This, in many ways, is what keeps happening to Bayern Munich’s opponents: after taking an early lead, Bayer Leverkusen were eventually greeted with a relentless onslaught. If Serge Gnabry’s goal just before half-time did not settle things, then Robert Lewandowski’s 44th goal of the season probably did. As a result, Leverkusen were left mesmerised by Bayern’s physical strength and deftness of touch, chasing the game in the second half like kittens pawing at dangling threads.
But Leverkusen’s success will not be judged by defeat to Bayern. This is a team of extreme qualities: speed of pass, speed of thought, speed of movement. Their current run of form – which has seen them win 15 of their last 16 matches – has shown us that they have found more ways to win. They may not have all the right answers, but they know all the right questions.
Perhaps it may take individual quality, like Leon Goretzka’s left-footed strike in the first half. Perhaps it is as simple as one ball over the top of a flailing defence to release the striker, like Gnabry’s fine goal showed.
Or, perhaps, it is the habits that Hansi Flick has re-installed since taking over in November. One of Flick’s priorities when replacing Niko Kovac was restoring the infamous Bayern press: high energy, high tempo, high aggression. The result has been to radically alter the atmosphere at a club that on 7 December were sat in 7th place, pointing towards their worst season for 26 years.
This pressing philosophy – as much as Lewandowski’s goals or Muller’s hot streak or Neuer’s leadership, is what has seen them move seven points clear at the top of the Bundesliga.
Thomas Muller’s return to form has been somewhat interesting – a player who has never been the star of this Bayern team yet has somehow slipped under the radar: seventh in Bayern’s all-time appearance list, fourth for Bundesliga goals, top of the assists chart this season. We often point to experience or instinct to describe player’s like Muller. What we are actually describing is learned complexity, a player who has spent over a decade eluding detection, shape shifting across the pitch, filling the voids.
His success has coincided with the core of a team who have spent the best part of a decade playing together. This, as well as the spine of a team entering the peaks of their careers, is of course helpful. The fourth goal on Saturday epitomised this: Kimmich to Gnabry to Muller to Lewandowski. A short but devastating chain of attacking runs gave Muller the opportunity to place the ball on Lewandowski’s head. It was the sort of attacking play that this club demands as a bare minimum: spontaneous, clever, clinical, yet giving off the strong impression that is was rehearsed weeks beforehand on the training ground.
What of Leverkusen, then? In his press conference, Leverkusen head coach Peter Bosz accepted the difference in quality. “It looked as if we could keep up in the first 30 minutes, but even then, I felt we wouldn’t give a top performance today.” This was a telling comment, not least because it showed how opposition coaches view playing Bayern: the opposition are infinitely strong, we are infinitely weak.
Reputations stick in football. There comes a moment in any club’s run of form where their mentality and strengths are contested, their resolve challenged. The rest is for their opponents to find out. For Bayern Leverkusen on Saturday it lasted a half an hour. Borussia Dortmund, their nearest challengers, thwarted them in one half, and were merely picked apart in the other. Like green shoots pushing their way through frost-bitten earth, somehow Bayern Munich will find a way.
Alex's Sports Column 