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Luuk de Jong wasn't the only Barça professional with a difficult stance
Photo: Sven Hoppe / dpa
The disappointment of the game:
40,000 spectators were allowed into the Camp Nou. Many of them will remember great games and great players: Andrés Iniesta, Xavi Hernández, Lionel Messi. It was only a good six years ago that her Catalan short-pass style, this offensive vortex based on a blind understanding of technical top-class, was the benchmark for the football game in Europe. On September 14, 2021, however, for the first Champions League game of the era after Messi, FC Barcelona was a club that holed up behind a five-man chain at home. Who did not get a shot on the goal of his under-challenged opponent. And who drew the whistles of his loyal supporters, who at the end only celebrated themselves in the stands, because they no longer expected their team to riot.
The result:
FC Bayern won 3-0 (1-0) at FC Barcelona, which was enough to take the lead in Champions League group E after the first matchday. Click here for the match report.
The first half:
In fact, both teams shared possession at the beginning, but both teams passed the ball to each other almost exclusively in half of Barcelona. There Bayern needed a certain amount of time from coach Julian Nagelsmann, who had already turned what was supposed to be a top game into a better training game in the league against Leipzig, to adjust to the additional defender and the wings covered in this way. They simply pulled their own flank players more into the middle in order to cause unrest there by dribbling. That worked quite well, but Thomas Müller's falsified long-range shot turned the lead into a coincidence (34th).
The storm:
The offensive harmlessness of FC Barcelona was almost frightening. After Messi's move to Paris Saint-Germain and Antoine Griezmann's last minute return to Atlético Madrid, Dutchmen Luuk de Jong and Memphis formed the storm. In particular, penalty area striker de Jong did not get into the game at all, the former Gladbacher had made 17 ball contacts at the break. Even Manuel Neuer came to 18, while the Bayern goalkeeper did not get a shot on his goal.
The fear of the bottomless:
Perhaps the approach of Barça coach Ronald Koeman also played a role in the memory of the last meeting of the two clubs. In August 2020, FC Bayern rolled 8-2 over Barcelona into the Champions League semi-finals in Lisbon, it was an even more spectacular, even more traumatic clap. At that time, the model imploded to compensate for the loss of a common footballing identity by purchasing individual classes. Now the Catalans have given up a large part of these great players due to financial hardship. Nothing has improved as a result (yet).
The second half:
Bayern were allowed to continue to determine the game without resistance, took almost all the second balls and were never put under too much pressure. Robert Lewandowski, meanwhile, almost doubled his name on the scorers list when he hit the post rebound from Jamal Musiala (56th) and Serge Gnabry (85th) over the goal line.
A youth out of necessity: The
fact that the final offensive did not take place at Barcelona was also due to the reserve players.
Apart from ex-Munich Philippe Coutinho, none of Koeman's substitutes were older than 22 years old.
The short-term success is unlikely to be achieved in this way.
But Iniesta, Xavi and Messi also had to assert themselves as youngsters among the Barça professionals before they themselves became top performers in the club's most successful years.
Big footsteps for the offspring around the dribbling artist Yusuf Demir, who was hired from Austria, but there is no one else there to grow into them.
A little blackout:
This season, Amazon shows the Champions League top game every Tuesday, the stream is reserved for Prime members. For this purpose, the provider put together a team that had more experience than the Barça Bank: two field reporters, hand-picked experts from Kim Kulig to Matthias Sammer to Mario Gómez, plus Benedikt Höwedes as the sidekick of commentator Jonas Friedrich. So it became a challenge to give everyone their speaking time: Sammer went into the detailed criticism of the Bavarian graduations, Gómez greeted his ex-teammate Neto on the Catalan bench, referee expert Wolfgang Stark was not needed at all. The conclusion, however, should be positive: beyond a few seconds of picture loss in minute 67, it was at least a rock-solid debut for the Amazon XXL crew.
