Disaster, catastrophe, shock. The stock phrases of football reporting feel awfully inappropriate in the wake of an attack that saw three explosions hit the Borussia Dortmund team bus on Tuesday. What transpired at the Allianz Arena on Wednesday night was mercifully only a run-of-the-mill defeat for Bayern in a big, important football game, nothing more than an uncomfortable experience for the home fans and their team that paled into insignificance by comparison with the events 24 hours earlier.
But it still hurt, regardless. Football’s great appeal lies in the way it allows those who play and follow to lose themselves in the game, to find 90 minutes of joy and triumph and camaraderie to divert from everyday troubles. But there is an unwelcome side effect: Football can also make you much more miserable than you have any rational right to feel. This is not despite it being just a game, but precisely because of it.
Everybody at Bayern — Carlo Ancelotti, the players, the staff, the fans — were confident that this was shaping up to be their season again, that their thirst for the Champions League could be quenched once more after three years of near-misses under Pep Guardiola. The sense of disbelief that greeted the home team’s second-half collapse against Real Madrid was only more pronounced as a consequence. Bayern are not used to coming off a key game feeling grateful that they were only beaten 2-1 on their own home turf. They have no frame of reference for such a turn of events.
Madrid had toyed with them after Javi Martinez’s dismissal, registering a shot every few minutes. The Bundesliga champions had Manuel Neuer and the La Liga club’s sloppy finishing to thank for escaping with a vaguely respectable scoreline and a tiny percentage chance of turning things around in the second leg. Ancelotti and the players made the right noises, but whether they themselves believe it is another matter. Surely, too much damage was done beyond the result itself: Wednesday night’s game ran brutally counter to the club’s self-conception, the idea it had of itself.
Take the keenly felt absence of Robert Lewandowski. Bayern have always believed that they can take on other European giants by way of collective strength and squad depth, not by reliance on one or two superstars. The match revealed that this faith was misplaced. Lewandowski, the centre-forward who never gets injured, missed the game through injury and there was no one to stand in. Thomas Muller has never been a classic target man at the best of times; the Germany forward, low on confidence after a testing, unproductive season, looked utterly lost leading the line.
Bayern, too, were sure that the team’s experience and personality would give them an edge. But it didn’t. Arturo Vidal lost his nerve to miss a glorious chance to make it 2-0 and blasted a penalty over the bar soon after. Martinez, one of the most solid performers of the season thus far, inexcusably got himself sent off with two tactical fouls in short succession. Franck Ribery and Arjen Robben, the veteran on the flanks, offered neither enough willingness nor stamina to track back in the second half. Collectively, the team lost first its head and then its shape, proving unable to change tack and protect a 1-1 draw. Energy levels looked poor, despite much talk about Ancelotti having conditioned the side to peak right now.
And where was the coach in all of this? The 57-year-old’s experience, too, was meant to come to the fore at crunch time, but his changes only contributed to the chaos and near capitulation. It was troubling for the Allianz Arena crowd to witness their side falling apart when one man down; defending deep and in numbers is a basic ploy any team should be able to pull off with reasonable competence, let alone a team of winners and stars coached by one of the best managers in world football.
Worst of all, perhaps, was Toni Kroos’ masterful, imperious performance pulling the strings of the Madrid midfield. The club felt that he had asked for too much money for his contract renewal in 2014, that he was too self-centred and not committed enough to be a part of the Bayern family. They wanted to make a point. But with each passing year of his departure, the folly of losing the most accomplished German central midfielder of his generation has come into sharper focus. Thiago Alcantara, for all his great progress this season, was nervy and imprecise by contrast, unable to provide structure, strategy and rhythm when Bayern needed it most.
There’s every possibility that Ancelotti’s men, with Lewandowski restored upfront, will play a more cohesive game on Tuesday night, but it might not be enough to ward off their earliest exit in the Champions League since Louis van Gaal crashed out vs. Inter in the last 16 in 2011. For a team built to win the European Cup, that would be nothing less than a chastening failure.
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