The press room in the Munich arena is by no means a provincial stage with the dimensions of a storeroom. Anyone who steps down the steps that slope towards the stage, who walks past the rows in which the seats are covered with red fabric, creeps the feeling that all of this has been conceived to perform the great subjects of world theater. When Pep Guardiola was presented there eight years ago as the new coach of FC Bayern, you had never seen so many TV cameras, cameras, flashlights and journalists in one place. 250 reporters from eleven countries came, some from Japan, Brazil and Qatar. And in the atrium, roast beef, cress salad and Queso Manchego were served, with Jamón Ibérico, flown in from Guardiola’s homeland, fresh from the leg.
The memories of what is possible now came to mind again because the press room had been closed for a year and a half due to the pandemic and was only recently reopened. Journalists, world trainers and everyday trainers can finally come closer to each other again in good disguises. The person who, as the main protagonist of a soccer drama that has just been performed, was the first to come down the steps and take the stage on Sunday immediately proved how important the reopening of the theater is. He wore the dress of a soccer goalkeeper.
And if the appearance of the reporters was not deceptive, among whom this time there were none from Japan, Brazil or Qatar, then the man of the day was not even Manuel Neuer, the number one at Bayern and national coach Hansi Flick. But about Kevin Trapp, the goalkeeper of Eintracht Frankfurt, Flick’s number four – behind Bernd Leno from FC Arsenal and Marc-André ter Stegen from FC Barcelona.
Bayern coach Nagelsmann didn’t sound like he was deeply shaken
Mr. Trapp, do you sometimes get the feeling in advance when things are going well in a game? “Do you mean with me? Or with the team?” Nice try. So re-drilled. Mr. Trapp, was that the best game of your career now? “Wow,” says Trapp. “That was so many years ago now … I have to think back. It is definitely one of them.” Short break. “Well, I didn’t win the game alone.”
Really not?
It is always a comforting thing for the coach of an inferior team to know that something extraordinary has happened on the opponent’s side that is beyond their control. Special phenomena are fundamentally fascinating. They can be used to explain complex issues in the economy, such as sudden inflation. And in football, they help when a team like FC Bayern, after a 1-1 draw against Borussia Mönchengladbach at the start, nine competitive wins in a row (including a 3-0 against Barcelona, a 5-0 against Kiev and a 4-1 against Leipzig) like losing 2-1 to Eintracht Frankfurt without warning on Sunday.
Special phenomena are particularly exciting when the coach, who is responsible for all the victories and one defeat, has only been in office since the start of the season. After his first game without a point in Munich, Julian Nagelsmann didn’t sound like he was deeply shaken to the depths of his soul when he analyzed dryly: “I found the game no different from the games in the last few weeks. Only the result is another. “
Can this be? Can such a 3: 1 against Greuther Fürth, which also happened recently, essentially resemble a 1: 2 against Eintracht Frankfurt?
In fact, both the Fürth and the Kievan had also had the options that were now sufficient for Eintracht. That doesn’t have to mean anything, however, as they can be seen in every game of a D youth team. Martin Hinteregger rammed a corner with his head into the goal (32nd), because the Munich defensive boss Dayot Upamecano, who was strangely misleading on Sunday, preferred to defend the air in the free space than against the Frankfurt, who already scored two goals against Manuel Neuer in three minutes in May 2020 had achieved. And the excellent Filip Kostic took advantage of Bayern’s loss of the ball seven minutes before the end. Whereby Kostic used one of his special tricks, which in turn is rarely seen in the D-youth: a shot from a very acute angle, which apart from Kostic not many midfielders in the world dare to play against Neuer.
But it’s true: apart from these chances and an extremely mundane defensive bulwark made up of eight or nine black-clad men around their own penalty area, Eintracht didn’t have much to offer on Sunday. Accordingly, Nagelsmann was not so upset about his first competitive defeat in Munich. Rather, because it was so unnecessary. “Totally avoidable,” as Nagelsmann put it.
And yet the game had revealed a pattern of how Bayern can be defeated when an opposing team dares to resort to the unpopular means of radical defense. It was “always fatal in the end,” said Nagelsmann, “if you play four against one in the build-up and then have the other six players in the front line because there is then a big hole in the middle”. What sounds very complicated describes something simple: Four defenders try to transport the ball very quickly into the opposing penalty area, where Nagelsmann would like to see a lot of possible pass recipients. If the ball is lost during setup, there is no one left in midfield to recapture it. This is how Kostic’s winning goal came about. “We must not give away too much staff in the construction and must maintain the staggering”, now demanded Nagelsmann.
The fact that Eintracht survived the continuous fire on their goal on Sunday halfway unscathed and only Leon Goretzka (29th) overcame the bulwark was due to the one-man special phenomenon Kevin Trapp. He flew, wriggled and caught all the balls so artistically that he would have earned a high-calorie banquet before his honorary press conference like Pep Guardiola did when greeting him. It is not often that a header that is not badly placed by world footballer Robert Lewandowski does not find its way past the goalkeeper from a distance of five meters. Trapp blocked 19 of Bayern’s 20 shots on goal. And a 21st from his teammate Kristijan Jakic, who was not the least dangerous.
National coach Hansi Flick, who probably came earlier to experience the so-called Bayern block at work before the upcoming international matches against Romania and North Macedonia, saw from the stands how the Frankfurt Trapp questioned his own non-nomination with lots of good deeds posed. So with parades, not with words. Trapp recognized that Flick would “not call him today”. Knowing full well that a game with plenty of special phenomena neither shakes the ranking of the national goalkeepers, nor does a state crisis start on Säbener Straße. “If we make it 2-1, it can also end 3-1 or 4-1. Then we stand again and sing Super Bayern. And that’s nothing with Super Bayern,” said Thomas Müller. There is nothing to add.
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