It’s actually nothing new for German football fans that the winner of the championship has already been decided in April. That’s how it was in 2013, 2014 (back in Pep Guardiola’s debut season, even in March!), 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2022. It will most likely be the same in 2024. And yet something is new for football fans in Munich and in all other cities (and districts) in the Bundesliga this season: it will not be FC Bayern who will win the championship so early.
On this Saturday, April 13th and the 29th Bundesliga matchday of the season, Bayern could only prevent the worst: Leverkusen, the dominant team in the league, becoming champions on the legendary sofa. And because Raphaël Guerreiro shot the ball so artfully into the goal against 1. FC Köln in the 65th minute and Thomas Müller repeated it less artfully in the 90th minute, at least that worked quite confidently.
The interesting thing about this rather mediocre Bundesliga game in Munich (in which, as they say in football language, Cologne could have had more) was that one team was clearly not interested in the Bundesliga.
This Saturday it was not only worth mentioning who Thomas Tuchel, Bayern’s coach, selected, but also who he did not select. He did without seven players who were in the starting line-up in the first quarter-final game of the Champions League in London last Tuesday (final score: 2-2): Manuel Neuer, Alphonso Davies, Konrad Laimer, Leon Goretzka, Serge Gnabry, Jamal Musiala and Leroy Sané .
And even if Neuer and Sané were not even nominated for the squad against Cologne, it will probably only be Davies (yellow suspension) and Gnabry (torn hamstring) who will be selected for the decider against Arsenal FC on Wednesday (9 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Champions League and DAZN).
Which speaks for Mazraoui
In the stands of the arena, where he had to sit because of a yellow card suspension on this sunny Saturday, Thomas Tuchel will have taken a close look at at least two players: Raphaël Guerreiro and Noussair Mazraoui. One of the two will probably replace left-back Davies. Will it be Mazraoui who is allowed to start in his regular position?
What speaks in his favor is that he is faster than Guerreiro (which is a good argument given the duel with Arsenal winger Bukayo Saka). What speaks for Guerreiro is that, all in all, he is the better football player – which he then proved against Cologne. Because of the movements and passes that speed up the game.
And of course because of the first goal of the game, which he scored in the 65th minute after a corner kick: He waited at the corner of the penalty area, where no Cologne player was guarding him and where Joshua Kimmich then passed it to him. He turned with the ball and then shot it into the far corner with his left foot.
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When it was finally 1-0, Thomas Tuchel had already suffered a serious setback: in the 49th minute, winger Kingsley Coman, who has only been able to play again for a few weeks, was left lying in the penalty area because of “a stab”. his muscles were driving, as sports director Christoph Freund later said. And because he couldn’t put any weight on his leg afterwards, he was rushed out of the stadium.
This was not only tragic for the player, who has been plagued by injuries again and again this season, but also for his coach, because Coman was one of the candidates who could have replaced Gnabry in the Champions League. So the Gnabry position should go to good old Thomas Müller. And if you didn’t already know that Müller never lacks self-confidence, then you could at least have interpreted it as a good sign that he scored the 2-0 in stoppage time.
