After the landmark victory, the players collected their reward in front of the fan corner. FC Bayern fans cheered their team on Saturday evening after the 4-2 (3-0) win over Borussia Dortmund and chanted: “Only FCB will be German champions.”
Before the top game, the German soccer record champions in the Bundesliga were one point behind and are now two points ahead of BVB. In the first game under coach Thomas Tuchel, five days after his first training session, there was a success that sent a signal. Bayern took back the lead in the table and humiliated Dortmund. But the 49-year-old wasn’t completely satisfied.
Where other coaches would have praised in detail, Tuchel mainly addressed weaknesses after the final whistle. “The game was a bit too open for me, a bit too wild,” he began his analysis. And immediately send a demand for the upcoming games: “I want more dominance in the opposing half. In the second half it was too sloppy, actually the whole game, we lost the ball too much. There was a lot of will, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.”
Tuchel continues: “It has worked out okay now. I don’t want to downplay it either, but there’s still a lot to improve.” He understands that some things didn’t work out that way. “It’s not easy to play straight away against the league leaders. It’s like a band or an orchestra: we have to find our rhythm. Nothing helps better than games and victories.”
In terms of efficiency, Tuchel was satisfied: “The will to implement things, the will to suffer was there one hundred percent. We made goals out of chances that weren’t all that clear. That was a very good start. It will give us the desire to keep improving. Because we have to too.”
During the game, Tuchel was quite calm on the sidelines. He kept giving instructions, after the game he hugged the players and staff.
Herbert Hainer, on the other hand, left the Munich stadium late in the evening with a blissful smile. The club president said: “We saw what the team is capable of today, especially in the first half. We could have scored six, seven or eight goals.”
He has now seen Tuchel for a few days. “He’s a very eloquent, thoughtful, technically highly qualified coach who’s certainly good for us.” When asked in Tuchel’s matter-of-fact manner on the sidelines on this special football evening, Hainer said: “He’s not one to twirl around on the sidelines. He is very analytical and structured. He is incredibly professional, even now in the dressing room.”
What did Tuchel do differently in the first few days? Midfield boss Joshua Kimmich, who was one of the most important contacts within the team for Tuchel’s predecessor Julian Nagelsmann, said about the first week under Tuchel: “We already had a few video sessions with content for the fact that we only had two or three days. He’s focused on a few things. Our goal was to give the game more structure and not make it look quite as wild, although we didn’t quite succeed. I found his speech very, very positive.”
Certainly Nagelsmann also had his share of the success, not everything was deleted that was before the change of coach. You had too many ball losses against Dortmund and need more ball possession in the future, said Kimmich.
In the analysis, Tuchel and his leading players had the same direction and focus. Double goal scorer Thomas Müller said: “The coach gave us a lot of security. We are happy, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us.”
The next game for Bayern is already scheduled for Tuesday evening: They host SC Freiburg in the quarter-finals of the DFB Cup.