The year’s first warm sun was met by Bayern Munich’s darkest moment of the season. Their 2-0 defeat to Borussia Dortmund at the Allianz Arena on Saturday evening ended any lingering hope of winning a 12th straight Bundesliga title. Bayer Leverkusen’s 2-1 win over Hoffenheim makes that a virtual certainty, extinguishing whatever hope remained of a miraculous comeback.
But defeat for Bayern, against an opponent over whom they have so often enjoyed an emotional hold, betrayed just how fragile they have become. The loss was stark and ugly. It was deserved and deeply dispiriting too.
Dortmund are hardly enjoying a vintage year. They needed their win to strengthen their chances of a top-four finish. Yet Edin Terzic’s side were better in nearly every area: sharper in front of goal, sturdier in defence, quicker and more lethal when breaking forward. By comparison, Bayern were a husk.
This was the night that revealed how extensive the rebuild might have to be in Munich. While Xabi Alonso’s Leverkusen have been the story in Germany this season, admiration has been tempered with the expectation that, before long, Bayern would quickly become all-powerful again, with their rivals shrinking away.
That now seems naive. It’s easy to imagine Bayern winning the Bundesliga again, but the dominance and status they have enjoyed across Europe seems far away. A Champions League tie against Arsenal, a team they became accustomed to humiliating, should now be approached with deep trepidation. Anything other than a victory for the Premier League side would be a surprise; that is how frayed Bayern have become.
Joshua Kimmich during the Klassiker defeat to Dortmund (Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)
This is not a sudden decline, but rather the culmination of a downward trend. In each of the previous four seasons, Bayern’s Bundesliga points tally has fallen: 82 in 2019-20, 78 in 2020-21, 77 in 2021-22. Amid the many goings-on during last season’s final day — Dortmund’s collapse against Mainz, the sackings of Hasan Salihamidzic and Oliver Kahn — it escaped notice that, with 71 points, Bayern had recorded their lowest tally since 2011, when they finished 3rd.
They have been getting worse for some time. Like a fighter who grows flat-footed without a worthy challenger, Bayern’s standards have been dropping. The chemistry that used to make them so formidable, that domestically gave them the energy of 1980s AC Milan or 1990s Manchester United, has slowly dissipated. Bad decisions have been made on many different issues. It has left them exposed to the effects of their ageing core and, ultimately, to the excellence of Alonso’s Leverkusen.
There will be no title this year. So, no gloss and no distractions. There is no alternative but to stare this team’s decline in the face and recognise that the same flaws have reoccurred in each big game Bayern have played this season.
They have a terrible vulnerability to attacking transitions. They possess a stop-start attacking rhythm that stymies their ball movement. Their midfield’s inability to protect the defence, particularly from speed, especially against the counter-attack, seems an incurable weakness.
Bayern may have a heavy enough punch for those problems not to matter every week. They have the thrust and reputation to put Harry Kane in touching distance of Robert Lewandowski’s single-season Bundesliga goalscoring record.
But, at the biggest moments, their flaws are always there. In the shocking 3-0 Super Cup loss to RB Leipzig in August, for instance, and in the underlying detail of the two league games. Against Leverkusen. In the first match in Munich when they were outplayed. And in the second at the BayArena when they were outplayed and badly beaten.
The one exception was their 4-0 thumping of Dortmund in the Westfalenstadion in November. That was the only moment that soothed Bayern’s ego this season. It was the night when Thomas Tuchel triumphantly confronted Lothar Matthaus on Sky Deutschland and a win during which their attacking class suggested that they could be powerful despite their blemishes.
Saturday night’s defeat exploded that belief. Yes, it might have gone differently. Kane should have scored with an early second-half header and, in his press conference, Tuchel decried the decision not to award a penalty for a handball shortly after. A late Kane goal was also ruled out for offside.
Julian Ryerson celebrates after putting Dortmund two goals ahead (Matthias Hangst/Getty Images)
But it’s difficult to defend the ease with which Karim Adeyemi was able to run beyond Matthijs de Ligt for the game’s first goal. Adeyemi is one of the quickest forwards in the Bundesliga and a defender of De Ligt’s build can never be left one-on-one with him.
The game’s second goal was a long time coming. Sven Ulreich had already made one excellent save before Dortmund worked the ball across the Bayern box, the defenders failed to shift across or react, and Julian Ryerson, alone, hit home.
Dortmund have not been very good this season. The fact that the 7,000 travelling supporters were still so loud by the 83rd minute really did tell the tale of the night.
The road back for Bayern is not as simple as identifying gaps in the team and signing players. Getting those decisions right is still imperative, but they are relatively easy. More troubling issues need resolving. How to reconcile Joshua Kimmich’s desire to play as a No 6 with his best role in the team, which is full-back? What to do with Leon Goretzka. Whether to keep all of Dayot Upamecano, De Ligt and Kim Min-jae, even though it seems unlikely that they will be able to play as a trio.
One of the marks of Bayern’s dysfunction over recent seasons is that, in a few cases, they have missed ideal selling points for players. Kimmich could have commanded a vast fee a few years ago. Goretzka too. Now, the markets for both have softened, which characterises both the nature of the challenge ahead and its scale.
Big personalities are ageing. Others are approaching the end of their time at the club for different reasons. There are big transfers to make, certainly, but there are past deals to wind back, too, and this reconfiguration will be a long-term and delicate project.
No wonder it is uncertain who the right candidate to fill the coaching vacancy is; it’s only clear now how big this job might actually be.
(Top photo: Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)
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