The Champions League is a strange place. Club football’s highest level may have become predictable in some ways, but its premier European competition still possesses a peculiar gravity.
On Tuesday, in a 2-2 home draw against Real Madrid in the first leg of their semi-final, Bayern Munich gave a performance that did not quite come from nowhere but was at odds with all the assumptions about Thomas Tuchel’s side.
Head coach Tuchel is leaving his job in the summer. He has spent the last few days arguing, through the German media, with Uli Hoeness, Bayern’s honorary president, and defending himself from claims that he cannot develop young players. It’s a bizarre row, hopelessly timed, and it seemed certain to destabilise a team already desperately short of authority and ego.
And yet rich seams of both ran through last night’s performance. Madrid will be happy to take the draw back to their Santiago Bernabeu for the decider next Wednesday, but they are fortunate to have that parity. Bayern played the better football. They carried the greater menace. More than that, though: they ratcheted their intensity and technical precision to a level they have been incapable of reaching this season.
Bayern’s timing was impeccable.
Twenty-four hours before the game, Tuchel had spoken of the many dangers posed by Madrid. Carlo Ancelotti and his ludicrously gifted young squad were approaching on the horizon and yet Tuchel was as worried about aura as he was Jude Bellingham, Vinicius Junior or Aurelien Tchouameni.
He was right to be because Madrid have long been a team who do their deadliest work in the dark. They score goals in the shadows. They win games that do not belong to them. For many teams, even for a Manchester City side coached by Pep Guardiola, facing Madrid in European competition has often been a psychological conundrum. The shirts, the history, the reputations; Tuchel was reminding his players to be careful in that hall of mirrors.
Thomas Muller knew what to be wary of. In his post-match interview, he said he was not satisfied with a draw. He clearly felt Bayern had played well enough to win. “But that’s Real Madrid,” said the 34-year-old. “You know it. You saw it twice against (Manchester) City in the last years. You see it in every game, so you have to be careful.”
Bayern might have been more cautious. Perhaps hunting for a third goal instead of settling for two cost them. Time will tell, but their bravado was encouraging and was drawn from somewhere other than a current season which, until now, has been full of sobering disappointments. Leverkusen have run away with the Bundesliga. Third-division Saarbrucken humiliated them in the DFB-Pokal (Germany’s FA Cup), eliminating them before Christmas. Bayern have spent much of 2023-24 needing to be reminded of who they actually are.
Before kick-off last night, the fans in the Allianz Arena’s south stand did that, unfurling a vast tifo homage to the late Franz Beckenbauer that stretched across the length and breadth of their section.
Aura? Yes, Bayern have quite a bit of that themselves. For much of the game that followed, they played under the spell of their own history. It was a different tone of performance to that which defeated Arsenal in the quarter-finals. While that tie’s game here saw a conservative Bayern happy to sit in and break, this time they emerged with an intent to play and a desire to own their pitch.
Mostly, albeit with some flaws and jitters, they did just that.
They may have trailed at half-time, returning to the dressing room 1-0 down after falling prey to an impossibly slick piece of play between Toni Kroos and Vinicius Jr, but they had been the better side. Their attacking was sharp and confident. They explored Madrid’s defence with the assured passes and vibrant movement that suggested they were determined to find a weakness.
What a difference.
At times, their 2023-24 Bundesliga campaign has seemed so fatigued: in mind, rather than body, as if Tuchel’s team was dazed by endless criticism and the uncertainty over their future. But — and this is exactly the quality Bayern’s manager had described in their Spanish opponents — on came the Champions League music and the bright lights and out of their corner came Bayern Munich.
Harry Kane puts Bayern 2-1 up from the penalty spot (Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)
Much of the criticism the club have suffered over recent years has, reasonably, focused on their recruitment. The suggestion is that team chemistry had been sacrificed in favour of signing individual players who do not suit or serve the collective. It’s hard to argue against that or to defend — for instance — the Sadio Mane transfer or the decision to allow David Alaba to leave.
Perhaps, but last night was a break from the drudgery of that conversation. Against Madrid, everything, even the illogical, made some kind of sense.
Leroy Sane, who has never quite been embraced since returning to Germany in 2020 after four years at City, produced a stirring equaliser in precisely the sort of moment he is accused of shying away from. Raphael Guerreiro’s introduction at half-time changed the dynamic in midfield, giving it a left foot, a better passing balance and a sharper edge. Alongside him, Konrad Laimer gave a nasty and rugged performance, full of Old Testament destructiveness.
All of these players come with question marks and asterisks. Each one is the subject of a conversation debating whether they really belong at Bayern and, most likely, those questions will continue to be asked.
They will, too, about Eric Dier, who was signed from Tottenham’s bench in January almost purely for his communication. He arrived to try to pull a group of young, impulsive defenders together into some kind of harmony. Dier did extremely well against Madrid. His centre-back partner, Kim Min-jae, suffered against Vinicius Jr and Rodrygo, but overall, in the context of the season, it was an improvement to watch Bayern’s defence bend without breaking.
On the left, Noussair Mazraoui fared as well against Rodrygo as he did against Bukayo Saka in the quarter-finals, despite being much more at ease on the right. It was another improbable success. On the other flank, Joshua Kimmich parked his resentment over no longer playing in midfield and was all gnarliness and technical class.
It was an odd night, full of moments that most did not see coming.
Thomas Tuchel blows kisses to fans before kick-off (Michaela Stache/AFP via Getty Images)
Given Hoeness’ criticism of Tuchel, perhaps Jamal Musiala’s merry dance was more predictable.
Bayern’s brightest young star playing with such life in a game of that magnitude was the obvious page-turn in this melodrama. But this was important for Musiala. His star has dimmed somewhat as Florian Wirtz has led Bayer Leverkusen to the Bundesliga title, but the 21-year-old tying Nacho into a hopeless knot to win a 57th-minute penalty was a reminder that there is more than one fabulously talented playmaker in Germany’s present and future.
And, ultimately, it was a further reminder that however illogical or unlikely, the Champions League always seems to stir something in these big-beast teams.
Bayern still have issues to solve. They have a head coach to appoint, a squad to remodel and questions to answer about how their new sporting structure will function.
Those challenges are still in their future — but so is a Champions League semi-final that they still might win.
(Top photo: Kerstin Joensson/AFP via Getty Images)
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