There are events where you cannot take your own physical well-being into account. Thomas Tuchel would probably have preferred to take the direct route down to the catacombs of the Munich Arena because of his broken big toe. But this Bundesliga game against FSV Mainz 05 on Saturday, this 8-1 win, required a little detour.
So the FC Bayern coach limped across the field, accepted congratulations and consoled those in charge of the opponent, sports director Martin Schmidt, once his successor at Mainz, and coach Bo Henrisken, while his team celebrated and was celebrated in front of the fan curve.
FC Bayern, it seems, is back to normal and back on track in the Bundesliga. Tuchel thought it was “a very close game for a long time”, but his team never “lost their head”, but “trusted the structure and kept it the whole game”.
After the break, the opponent made things too easy for Munich. “We thought we had a chance,” Henriksen said. But in the end, Schmidt complained, the team behaved “too naively,” said Schmidt, and stuck to the match plan of pushing Bayern high for too long. “That was a lesson in how not to appear here.”
The Munich team got off to a good start against Mainz, who were threatened with relegation, and kept stalking their way forward, but it wasn’t until twelve minutes that things really became dangerous. Thomas Müller saw Jamal Musiala start and passed precisely into his run, who passed the ball past Mainz goalkeeper Robin Zentner into the middle to Kane. The Bayern striker pushed the ball over the line from close range to give Munich the lead.
Tuchel gritted his teeth briefly, rose from his seat and hobbled through the coaching area, clapping. The fact that he had to make the first adjustment shortly afterwards did not harm his team’s flow of the game. According to Tuchel, Alphonso Davies, who had just recovered from an inner ligament strain, injured his teeth in an aerial duel with Silvan Widmer and had to be replaced by Raphael Guerreiro.
The victory in the Champions League during the week actually seemed to have released energy for the Munich team. They dominated Mainz, who had recently been more stable, and kept things busy in the opposing penalty area. Kane’s next dangerous shot hit the post, but Leon Goretzka picked up the rebound and made it 2-0 (19′).
The fact that things didn’t continue so smoothly for FC Bayern was due to Nadiem Armiri and also a little to Musiala, because Tom Krauß fouled around ten meters from the edge of the penalty area. Armiri shot the free kick over the ducking Müller into the goal to make it 1:2 (31st).
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The goal came out of nowhere, but now Mainz played a little more courageously. Even when Joshua Guilavogui was briefly unconscious after a serious collision with his colleague Anthony Caci, then had to be led off the pitch in a daze and replaced with “suspected mild concussion,” as sports director Schmidt explained after the game.
However, Bayern never came into serious trouble during this phase. Before the break they increased the tempo again and made it 3-1 through Kanes in stoppage time in the first half. Müller eliminated any remaining doubts about the second victory within four days. After an assist from Musiala, he pushed the ball over the line in the six-yard box (47′).
With the comfortable 4-1 behind them, the Munich team took things a little easier and allowed Mainz to make a few good moves in the penalty area, but this phase only lasted a good ten minutes before FC Bayern were back in the game: through with a 5-1 win Musiala. It was the beginning of another very lively final phase in which the opponent could no longer hold back. First, Serge Gnabry delivered one of those special stories that football sometimes writes.
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The attacker had been out injured for three months, made his first short appearance against Lazio on Tuesday and then a somewhat longer one on Saturday. Just four minutes after coming on as a substitute in the 62nd minute, he made it 6-1 – and that was the highlight of the day. He used his heel to play the ball through Zentner’s legs from a short distance.
But that wasn’t the end of it. Kane scored a third time and now has 30 Bundesliga goals (70th). Goretzka scored the final point in stoppage time with a header to make it 8-1.
