It was cold, it was raining, it was pretty uncomfortable in Salzburg, so it was the perfect place to prove something. It was 2: 2 three weeks ago just before the end of Bayern’s game against the outsider from Austria, whose point win looked like the right end result for a few minutes. But it was these minutes that later moved Hansi Flick to praise one of his players: Joshua Kimmich, said Flick, was “simply a mentality monster”. Kimmich first prepared the 3-2 in the 79th minute with a corner kick, then four minutes later initiated the 4-2 with a ball win and a through pass. Munich won 6: 2.
This Wednesday, Bayern will meet RB Salzburg again, with a win the defending champion would have qualified for the round of 16 of the Champions League after the fourth match day. However, should it get uncomfortable again, that could prove something again: how big the gap is that the failure of the national player Kimmich, 25, who operated on the outer meniscus, has torn in Bayern’s defensive midfield. Kimmich is not expected back until the new year.
Flick recently explained again what his basic idea was when he took over the team from Nico Kovac a year ago: he wanted to make the center of Bayern strong again. In the middle of the now famous axis between goalkeeper Manuel Neuer and attacker Robert Lewandowski, in front of central defender David Alaba and behind Thomas Müller, he positioned the former right-back Kimmich. Thiago, who has since moved to Liverpool, played with him in spring 2020. In retrospect, it was hardly accepted with the appropriate excitement how strong this center of the eventual triple winner was.
Kimmich organized and structured the Bayern game
As far as Thiago is concerned, FC Bayern made it clear again in the summer how special his skills should be. Because if they thought about how to replace the Spaniard, they had to come to the simple conclusion that this basically cannot work. A player with the special skills of Thiagos, who can evade the guarding of countless opponents like an escape artist with the ball at his feet, was simply not to be found on the market. His characteristic left-right body illusion, his dribbling and numerous passes, which gave FC Bayern the air to breathe even in tight games, are not movements that can be practiced by imitation.
It was all the more remarkable to see how Kimmich managed with his means that there was no talk of Thiago in the first weeks and months of the season. Kimmich built up the game from the defensive, dribbled less, often almost not at all, but sought the direct route to the goal more often with the chip balls characteristic of him – and also more often and more successfully than Thiago the end. If Kimmich didn’t attract attention on the ball, it was still impossible to overlook his outstanding presence, with which he organized and structured the Bayern game.
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