Bundesliga

Power-saving mode to the high-voltage

The legs are hard to FC Bayern after the dramatic Champions League first knockout round tie against Torino. Nevertheless, the table leaders to win by a nose at 1. FC Köln. A Munich there are losers nevertheless.

It is the 87. Minute of play in the Cologne stadium. The home fans in the South stand singing “a life for the club”, the Bavaria pan in the guest block brave their flags. And super technician Thiago dribbles. But the little Spaniard in the Jersey of the record master is not the opponent’s goal. No, he covers the Ball sent to the opponent’s corner flag. Franck Ribery comes around to help him, pokes with. So make it the two, to take 15, 20 seconds “of the clock”, as it’s called in football jargon.

Because Cologne is the balance in the closing stages of the match. A few minutes ago FC striker Anthony Modeste missed a hundred percent possibility. Alone in front of Manuel Neuer, he shoots the final man, the Munich-four meters, gates distance. No question, Bayern are flat. The 120 minutes of the Champions League victory against Juventus three days earlier take their toll. In the head and in the legs. “Today was not a game, it was a spectacle to be expected,” stated Bayern chief Karl-Heinz Rummenigge after the game. “It is important that we have the three points and now with at least five points ahead of Dortmund in the two weeks international break. Now, the players could refresh at last.”

Tired more in head

Philipp Lahm, Thomas Muller, Arturo Vidal and Franck Ribery may already be in breach of the Cologne. You sit start on the bench. So some of the reservists get a Chance: Sebastian Rode in midfield, Rafinha on the rear right. The match-winner against Juve, Thiago and Kingsley Coman. And Robert Lewandowski. Although it has been against the people of Turin the entire 120 minutes on the pitch, but should tell later, in the catacombs of the Cologne stadium with a Smile that Yes he had paused a week before. The age of consent exist, therefore, “more in the head”. The only goal against Cologne makes of the Pole with the foot: defensive errors in Cologne in 10. Minute, the Ball falls to the striker’s feet, and the same with the first Chance he scored from 16 meters in the 1:0 for the League leaders.

Striker Robert Lewandowski is Bayern in Cologne cheer

Also the few other possibilities of the Munich account for Lewandowski, who is now already at 25 season goals and, therefore, the current number one in the rankings. But another hit not wanted him to succeed. So laughed the game, a murmur went only through the stadium when Bayern risky situations triggered in the own defense with Tiki-Taka football and the Cologne Offensive, as in the Training pull that trick on most. “The dad mi scho annoyed if i had to pay for the card vui-the-money”, raunzt a colleague on the press to grandstand his neighbors in the bottom of my Bayer. Pity to the spectators. 50,000 at the sold-out stadium and not give up. And in fact, your Team should come more into the game. Alone-and-out striker Modeste has in the second half, three, four times the compensation on the foot.

Bayern’s Thomas Mueller looks on the Goings-on in the entire 90 minutes from the bench, gesturing and shaking the final whistle and pressed in between as a supervisor of his substituted players, is carefully put in Jackets and Blankets to the pumped colleagues Xabi Alonso, Douglas Costa and Sebastian Rode. “The body can take a break certainly good, but the spirit wants something else. To play always like,” Müller after the match against the DW through sound, that it had him quite irritated, even.

Götze looks to only

Bearing in Müller will not change. So he has something in common with Mario Götze. The cooking time on the bench. In spite of the Rotation. In spite of the fatigue of the Champions-League-heroes. And even though he should actually be fresh. Rummenigge is diplomatic. “I don’t interfere, it’s up to the coach. We have to play in the offensive area of six, seven players, and only four of those.” And addressed the fact that almost all of the service providers in the last period of long-term contracts, have been completed, with Götze asks Rummenigge to understanding, “that I would like to stand in personnel policy, no water messages.” A commitment to a Star sounds different. The days of the world Cup-winning goalscorer in Munich are likely to be counted. You have to trust him, apparently not even to defend the Ball against Cologne at the corner flag.