Bundesliga Champions League Check | FC Bayern München | OneFootball

For our next team feature here on Get German Football News, we will indeed be delving into the state of the mighty FC Bayern München. In this particular case, we’ll keep it very up-to-date with some tactical analysis from this evening’s Champions’ League victory over Chelsea FC at the Allianz Arena. The feature also carries with it some general Champions League preview notes, just like a piece on Bayern’s Bundesliga colleagues Borussia Dortmund published earlier this week. Bayern’s schedule lends them a UCL Preview article that merges with the template our recent “Tactics Check” columns.

Since we last checked in with Bayern just prior to the start of the season, the only real big piece of tactical news concerns the fact that Serge Gnabry has found new life as a No. 10. Beyond that, it’s basically just been off-the-pitch stuff going on as pertains to the German record champions. The team’s performance on the pitch has been gracious enough to promptly erase that from memory. Trainer Vincent Kompany suddenly appears the perfect man to coach this team, both due to his personal charm and his tendency to mostly allow the team to coach themselves.

Whether or not Bayern’s nearly flawless start to the season constitutes good news for German football is something that readers are free to decide for themselves. For the record, Germans have always and will always remain totally schizophrenic when it comes to that question. Cognitive dissonance does not exist when it comes to the mighty Bavarians. In the Bundesliga? Our most hated enemies. In the Champions League? Our national heroes. Bayern go from satan to savior back to satan in weeks like this. We root for them to fail, succeed, and then fail again. So it is.

FC Bayern München UCL Squad

Bayern’s UCL roster features three players – Hiroki Ito, Jamal Musiala, and Alphonso Davies – who remain out with injury. The German giants have no qualms about including this trio in large part because their absurdly small 25-man-squad leaves them with no choice. When it comes to this team, it’s worth repeating that the squad size really doesn’t matter all that much. Kompany’s FCB continue to successfully “coach themselves” through all three competitions.

Goalkeepers:

Neuer, Ulreich, Urbig

Defenders:

Upamecano, Kim, Tah, Ito, Guerreiro, Boey, Kiala, Stanišić

Midfielders:

Kimmich, Goretzka, Musiala, Olise, Davies, Bischof, Laimer, Pavlović

Forwards:

Gnabry, Kane, Jackson, Díaz

Probably the only name readers won’t recognize is that of 16-year-old centre-back Cassiano Kiala, who features for the Bayern U19s. No one from FCB II – currently working in the fourth-tier Bayern Regionalliga has been included. Again, that’s because the Bayern reserves have truly been picked clean of all developing talent ready to contribute.

The much-discussed 17-year-old burgeoning attacker Lennart Karl is on the “B-squad” and can be nominated at a moment’s notice. The same applies to Karl’s fellow new contractee Wisdom Mike, who is currently splitting his time between the Bayern reserves and U19s. Karl and Bayern U19 talent David Daiber both made Kompany’s UCL match-day squad against Chelsea on Wednesday night.

FC Bayern München remaining UCL Schedule

With “Oktoberfest Energy” successfully harvested against Chelsea on Wednesday, a pair of easier fixtures close out the “Wiesenzeit” before the cold hard tests of November set in. Bayern’s league schedule through All Hallows Eve also contains plenty of winnable fixtures. A slump in November in all competitions can still be prognosticated. One wonders what the team will get up to in Cyprus in a non-footballing-related sense. Probably nothing as most footballers are tightly requested these days.

Tuesday, September 30th

Pafos FC (A) 21:00

Wednesday, October 22nd

Club Brugge (A) 21:00

Tuesday, November 4th

PSG (A) 21:00

Wednesday, November 26th

FC Arsenal (A) 21:00

Tuesday, December 9th

Sporting Lisbon (H) 18:45

Wednesday, January 21st

Union Saint-Gilloise (H) 21:00

Wednesday, January 28th

PSV Eindhoven (A) 21:00

Note that – since the Club World Cup elimination – Bayern have completely run the table on all their official and unofficial opponents. The undefeated pre-season has now been followed up by six straight wins across three competitions. There was even a convincing win in a friendly over the September international break. Granted it was against pissant opponent Red Eagles Austria, but the FCB fourth string had everything under control.

This very much looks to be the year that Bayern return to collecting multiple trophies. They last accomplished this under Hansi Flick, another trainer who famously allowed the team to simply coach themselves in a simple 4-2-3-1. Kompany’s appointment remained no accident. The Belgian did try to tactically tinker a bit too much at the beginning, but rather quickly tracked on the right lessons from his predecessors.

Tactics Check, FC Bayern München

As noted above, there is next to nothing to discuss when it comes to current Bayern tactics. It’s nothing more than a simple 4-2-3-1 with interchangeable parts up from. We can nevertheless throw up a couple of graphics that demonstrate a few novel ideas potentially germinating in Kompany’s mind at this point. In the last two matches, the FCB trainer engaged in some light tinkering later on

Against HSV this weekend:

Lineup—Bayern—46th minute

While no one was looking (or indeed cared) Kompany tried out a little “diamond back” 4-4-2 for a little while against the utterly destroyed Hamburg guests. This actually had to be unexpectedly scrapped when Raphaël Guerreiro – contrary to the point of the entire laissez faire exercise – ended up injuring himself shortly after being subbed on at the half. Karl and Tom Bischof had to improvise a bit until Kompany could snap back to the 4-4-2 later.

We could potentially see something like this in the future, possibly with Bischof or Kimmich bolt locking the back four while Leon Goretzka pairs with Aleksandar Pavlovic in midfield. If there are any additional injuries in the defensive corps, it might even become a necessity. Pairing Harry Kane with Nicolas Jackson can provide the attack with extra punch in a pinch.

In any event, given that nothing much happened in the second half of the HSV match, it’s way too early to tell. No one on the pitch felt much like playing in the second half. As it sometimes goes in European continental football, medical emergencies in the stands grinds matches to a halt. There happened to be two of them in the second 45 against Hamburg.

Against Chelsea:

Lineup—Bayern—65th minute

Relevant in that Kompany opted for an extreme double stagger on that left-hand-side. Konrad Laimer – who had only twice played on the left before and wasn’t even a fullback at all until Thomas Tuchel fashioned him into one a couple of years ago – had to switch sides after Josip Stanisic got injured. Laimer did far better than the author has ever seen him do on the left and Kompany opted to double down with Goretzka for the final half-hour or so.

Something to keep in mind moving forward as well.

GGFN | Peter Weis