JAnyone preparing for a football game against VfB Stuttgart knows what is likely to happen if you give Borna Sosa and Sasa Kalajdzic enough space and time. The German-Croatian full-back can cross the ball so precisely and the Austrian center forward can head the ball so well that sooner or later this ball will find its way into the goal – even if Manuel Neuer is guarding it. Really everyone knows that. But why didn’t the FC Bayern players seem to know?
On Sunday evening, 50 minutes had passed at the stadium in Munich when FC Bayern happened what shouldn’t happen in a game against VfB Stuttgart. Within 20 seconds, Sosa was able to cross the ball three times with his left foot past passive full-back Benjamin Pavard into the penalty area, where Kalajdzic was lurking.
The first was cleared by central defender Dayot Upamecano, who then made a terrible mistake. The second time, central defender Tanguy Nianzou, who had made more than one terrible mistake before, cleared. The third time, neither Upamecano nor Nianzou cleared. So Kalajdzic headed the ball into Neuer’s goal to make it 2-2.
On Matchday 33, Stuttgart won a deserved point thanks to Kalajdzic’s goal in Munich, where a relegation contender actually doesn’t win any deserved points. This has consequences for the final day of the game: VfB now has a three-point lead over table 17. Arminia Bielefeld and only three points behind the table-15. Hertha BSC. And because he is superior to both Bielefeld and Berlin in goal difference, he will probably not be relegated directly, maybe he will even avoid relegation. And what are the consequences for FC Bayern?
It will probably now be in the comment columns that the master players from Munich were overwhelmed with Sosa and Kalajdzic, among other things, because many of them were together in Ibiza last Sunday and Monday (“as a team-building measure”; sports director Hasan Salihamidzic) and probably not only sipped still water.
Hard work and ultimately deserved: VfB Stuttgart scored a point in Munich.
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Image: EPA
But this argument is as diluted as the cocktails in an average German Ibiza bar. Anyone who puts them at the center of their analysis is playing down the sporting difficulties that are not only decisive for this 2: 2, but also for the summer on Säbener Straße.
In the first season under coach Julian Nagelsmann, the defense is still vulnerable. That led to the first goal conceded by Tiago Tomás (8th minute) – and to enough good chances for VfB. And so it was representative of the weak late phase of this Bayern season that the Munich players stood around in their own stadium a bit helpless and later waited for the championship trophy to be handed over, while the Stuttgart players celebrated with their fans.
