The spectacular 4-2 victory at VfL Wolfsburg was very important for FC Bayern. He saves the championship lead and brings some calm back to the club after turbulent weeks on and off the pitch. But the topic of Manuel Neuer will keep Bayern busy for a long time.
At least Thomas Müller can still get something positive from the big noise at his heart club. "I always think it's good when something stirs about FC Bayern," said the club icon at DAZN. "It means that the club and the players are still interesting enough to be used for big stories." Like FC Hollywood reloaded, so to speak.
What happened at the weekend leading up to the important 4-2 (3-1) win at VfL Wolfsburg in Bayern came very close to the turbulence of the Matthäus-Klinsmann-Beckenbauer period in the 1990s. The currently injured captain and national goalkeeper Manuel Neuer massively criticized his own club management in an interview with the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" and "The Athletic".
First and foremost it was about the separation from his close friend and goalkeeping coach Toni Tapalovic ("I felt like my heart was being ripped out"). But the conflict is obviously deeper and is by no means off the table due to the clear reaction of the club bosses. Neuer's statements revealed a strained relationship between the captain and the coach at FC Bayern, Julian Nagelsmann was ultimately the driving force behind Tapalovic's departure. According to a report by "Kicker", several teammates also expressed their solidarity with the goalkeeper internally after the interview.
So Nagelsmann's authority is weakened. Already around the departure of Robert Lewandowski to FC Barcelona there was talk of internal criticism of the goalscorer of the 35-year-old coach. The only thing that helps FC Bayern is success. And that's why the victory in Wolfsburg was so important and the relief about it so great. "Victory is everything," said Nagelsmann. Or as Thomas Müller put it: "We celebrated a must-win today. We withstood the pressure of having to win." Otherwise, the series champions of recent years would have fallen behind 1. FC Union Berlin in the Bundesliga table.
For FC Bayern, however, the following also applies: the work of a coach is no longer measured by winning the umpteenth German championship, but above all by the performance in the Champions League. And there is the worrying thing, less than a week and a half before the round of 16 first leg at Paris St. Germain, that Bayern are still a rather shaky entity by their standards.
They allowed 22 Wolfsburg shots on goal on Sunday. Also because of a yellow-red card for Joshua Kimmich (54th), Bayern threatened to miss a game despite a quick 3-0 lead after less than 20 minutes and the 4-1 after a great solo run by Jamal Musiala (73rd). to shake hands "I think that we were very unlucky to lose and that Bayern was lucky to win," said VfL coach Niko Kovac, who was only allowed to train Munich for a year and a half in 2018 and 2019, although he won the German championship and the DFB with them trophy won.
Nagelsmann is not there yet. But he knows that the dispute between Manuel Neuer and the club management is also a problem for him. "I wouldn't have done the interview," Nagelsmann said again after the game. "In one passage you can read that Bayern Munich is the focus. Completely separate from me personally, it was not beneficial for the club in terms of calm. You can see that from the fact that I now have to answer 16 of 17 questions on the subject ." One of the questions was whether things would calm down at Bayern after this win. And the coach replied, "I don't light anything. So I hope that's the case."
