The president ventured a prediction. As his team’s players warmed up for the Bundesliga home game against 1. FC Heidenheim on Saturday afternoon, Herbert Hainer stood with the microphone in the FC Bayern Munich football arena and was already talking about Sunday. “I think we will have a good atmosphere tomorrow,” he said – and you knew what he meant: the Munich general meeting, which will take place this Sunday.
And because the 100 million euro striker Harry Kane, whom Hainer and the club’s other strategists will most likely present to the members as a big new hero, scored his 16th and 17th Bundesliga goals in the first half of the game , from a sporting perspective there really seemed to be nothing wrong with a good atmosphere.
But then came the 67th minute and the 70th minute. Then came Tim Kleindienst and Jan-Niklas Beste, the little heroes from Heidenheim. Then came the 1:2 and the 2:2. And suddenly the president’s forecast shaky.
But then the 72nd minute came – and brought forth another hero this Saturday that Hainer and the members of Bayern probably hardly saw coming.
Guerreiro ends the tension
At the end of this game, which was only exciting for five minutes, the big Bavarians won against the small Heidenheimers – 4-2. For coach Thomas Tuchel, this result was probably the most important insight of the day. And yet that probably wouldn’t have been possible if there hadn’t been a second important insight: Raphaël Guerreiro, the hero of the little things, is playing again.
In the almost five months that the all-rounder from Portugal has been in Munich, he has played a total of 101 minutes. 28 against Munster. 45 against Leipzig. 29 against Heidenheim. And this Saturday he indicated why it would be very important for FC Bayern that he could play more minutes in the next few weeks and moments.
In the 72nd minute, when the duel was still exciting and the atmosphere of Saturday and Sunday was at stake, substitute Guerreiro shot the ball into the goal. 3:2, tension over. (In the 85th minute, Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting made it 4:2.)
When Tuchel was supposed to say later in the press conference what he liked about Guerreiro’s first game since his muscle injury, the words gushed out of him: “Smart, keen to play, confident on the ball, super-precise.” A player who, if he get the ball, make sure that the “tempo stays there” and that the next player “gets the ball perfectly”. But then Tuchel also said a sentence that you have to say when you talk about Guerreiro: “We will do everything to ensure that he stays healthy.”
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It is his body that prevents the hero of small things from becoming a hero of big things. In his seven seasons in Dortmund he only managed more than 24 Bundesliga games three times. And yet Bayern wanted him. The advantage is the versatility. He can be used as a left-back (and thus as an alternative to the faster but weaker Alphonso Davies), but also as a midfielder, as a so-called eighth.
That was his role during Dortmund’s run in the second half of the season, in which he controlled the game alongside midfielder Jude Bellingham. And that was his role this Saturday. You can see that he is very confident with the ball and that he positions himself cleverly. And even though he scored a goal this time and didn’t prepare a goal, that remains probably his most impressive statistic of the last Bundesliga season: twelve assists. In the major European leagues, only three players managed more: Kevin de Bruyne, Antoine Griezmann and Lionel Messi. All heroes of great things.
