Bayern Munich 10-0 Auckland City: Die Roten hit double figures against semi-professional opponents | OneFootball

Bayern Munich made mincemeat of minnows Auckland City in their first match in the FIFA Club World Cup.

Kingsley Coman gave die Roten the lead in the sixth minute and would finish with two goals to his name. Michael Olise also managed a brace, while Sacha Boey and Thomas Müller found the back of the net too before the halftime whistle was blown.

Jamal Musiala was introduced for Harry Kane in the second half and bagged a hat-trick, before Müller also scored his second. With a final score of 10-0, the game produced the biggest scoreline in the history of the Club World Cup – but for Auckland City, that’s not really the point.

As it happened

Four-thousand-nine-hundred-and-twenty-two. That’s the number of spaces between Bayern Munich (sixth) and Auckland City (4,928th) in the official FIFA Club World Rankings. That’s the number of clubs whose situation lies somewhere in the middle of the record Bundesliga champions and six-times champions of Europe, and a semi-professional side from Auckland, New Zealand. That’s the size of the challenge that lay ahead of manager Paul Posa’s side of sales representatives, barbers and real estate agents.

The goalkeeper position is perhaps the clearest indication of the disparity between the two sides. Bayern Munich’s Manuel Neuer was pivotal to Germany’s World Cup victory in 2014, following which he finished third in the Ballon d’Or rankings; he’s won the Champions League twice, and the Bundesliga in all but two of his 13 seasons at the club. Auckland’s Conor Tracey is a warehouse operative.

This wasn’t David versus Goliath, the Rebel Alliance versus the Galactic Empire, Iceland versus England: this was a boxing match between Mike Tyson and a Womble.

And yet, the whole thing was maybe the most endearing argument in favour of a competition about which the negatives have dominated the discourse.

From a Eurocentric lens, the Club World Cup is little more than another unnecessary tournament, another way for FIFA to expand its brand, another case of the executives viewing footballers as money-making robots and not people, of milking fans for all they’re worth.

But, from Auckland City’s position, this was a fever dream. They’ve played in 12 Club World Cups before in the old format, even finishing third in 2014, but they pale in comparison to this. Their group contains Bayern, Benfica and Boca Juniors. Royalty. By contrast, the Kiwi champions play in a 250-seater stadium (though the entire capacity is larger), out of which around 40 fans made the journey for this opening match. This was a chance to make memories which will never fade.

Of course, it was never going to be easy, and it started as such. Coman tested Tracey with a header on five minutes, winning a corner from which he nodded the ball this time into the back of the net. It was a terrific routine, a deep delivery from Joshua Kimmich towards an unmarked Jonathan Tah who, on debut, teed up Coman for the simplest of finishes.

After 12 minutes of playing with their food, the Bavarian juggernauts made their move and doubled their lead. Coman was involved again, this time nodding down a cross for Boey to fire a volley into the bottom left corner.

Then it was three before the 20th minute hit the clock. Müller’s low cross found Kane and his scuffed effort fell perfectly for Olise who, with Tracey having already committed to stopping the Kane shot which never came, fired home into an empty net.

In a flash, three became four, as Coman doubled up with a strike hit through the legs of vice-captain and estate agent Adam Mitchell before finding the bottom corner.

That goal was the third in four minutes, but perhaps the biggest indication of the gap between the two on the pitch came just prior to the half hour mark, when Boey volleyed the ball towards his own goal from a Bayern corner and Neuer collected it, totally unmarked, 20 yards of space either side of him, inside the Auckland half.

Off the ball, the minnowstried their hardest to form a solid block through which Bayern ultimately had no issues passing. Tracey said prior to the tournament that his side was representing the majority of footballers across the globe, and there was something distinctly relatable for any amateur player who has played in a match against a vastly superior side. The Kiwi outfit looked utterly helpless to stop the juggernauts hitting them over and over again.

The scoreline read 6-0 at the halftime break, Müller on the scoresheet for what will be one of the final times in a Bayern shirt. They’d had Auckland penned into their own box for 20 more minutes, and when Olise dinked cross into the box towards the unmarked Bavarian icon, there was no real surprise that his subsequent volley found the back of the net, nor when Olise himself then curled in a sublime strike from outside the area just before the whistle blew.

But of course, none of this was a surprise. In fact, the only shock was that Kane had failed to find the back of the net.

Bayern would go on to score four more in the second half, three courtesy of substitute Musiala, his first a whipped strike into the far corner, his second a penalty he himself won and his third after intercepting a wayward pass from Tracey. Müller, soon to retire, would make it double figures in the closing stages, securing a brace for himself too.

For their part, Auckland managed to both win a pair of corners – first after a counterattack led by New Zealand’s futsal captain Dylan Manickum and a deflected cross courtesy of university student Nathan Lobo, and second after substitute Angus Kilkolly also had a cross deflected out – as well as getting a shot on target also thanks to Kilkolly.

The reality is that this was never going to be much of a competition. It was a match only by name, interspersed between the rest of the global elite only down to the necessity to include an Oceanian representative in the Club World Cup. If Auckland had won, it would have been the upset of all upsets, but they were never going to win, and that was never what it was about.

As Kilkolly said when speaking to The Athletic before the tournament commenced, his life – and the lives of many of his teammates – is finely balanced. He wakes at 7am to work as a sales manager at a tools company before training in the evening and returning home at 9pm. Captain Mario Ilich wasn’t alone in using the entirety of his annual leave, in his case as a sales representative at Coca Cola, to participate in the competition.

This affair was a warm-up for Bayern, and the opportunity of a lifetime for a group of footballers whose commitment and sacrifice to the game is no different to, or perhaps even greater than, anyone else at this tournament. It is for teams like Auckland City that the Club World Cup actually, despite all the negatives, may actually have its place in football.

The lineups