Wolves send Reds tumbling back to earth

FCBayernNews · News fetcher Joined: 31 Aug 2006 Posts: 1321 votes: 2

01.10.2006

Felix Magath and Mark van Bommel were on their way from the practice ground to the dressing room on Sunday, when the pair briefly paused at the fence enclosing one of the pitches. The Bayern coach pointed to a match taking place in the distance, and exchanged a few words with his player. "Look, they're struggling too," he might have said, as the duo watched the FC Sportfreunde Munich reserves battling away in their local league meeting with SK Srbija Munich seconds.

Bayern were hardly firing on all cylinders at the weekend either, falling to defeat by the only goal of the game against bottom club VfL Wolfsburg just three days after what Karl-Heinz Rummenigge described as "our magnificent victory" away to Internazionale. "We're aiming to become a great team, so we have to be winning matches like this," Oliver Kahn declared after he and his men were brought crashing back to earth in Lower Saxony. "We have to understand that when you play for Bayern Munich, you have to give 120 percent in every match," the club captain urged.

Dominant but defeated

Bayern unquestionably gave it their best shot in Wolfsburg, claiming 63 percent of the possession, delivering 19 shots to their opponents' six, and winning the corner count 7-2. The league leaders utterly dominated proceedings on Saturday, "but we failed to score," a dismayed van Bommel reflected.

"You only win points for goals, and not for possession, chances or shots. If that was the case, we'd have run away with it. You can win on points in boxing, but only a knock-out will do in football," Magath mused. His charges could and should have taken a first-half lead, but home keeper Simon Jentzsch was not to be beaten on the day, and Germany international Mike Hanke dispatched the home side's solitary clear-cut chance of the match to settle the issue on 36 minutes.

Second successive away defeat

Apart from that, the struggling Wolves simply and exclusively chose to defend. "We kept up the pressure, but we couldn't find a way through," Magath analysed. The match contained strong echoes of the Reds' previous domestic away fixture in Bielefeld, where they were condemned to a 2-1 defeat. "We appear to have problems against ultra-defensive teams," the Munich boss confirmed.

In terms of tactics, the coach found fault with his troops for neglecting the flanks. "The centre of the field was too crowded," he pointed out. "We weren't clever enough."

Kahn: Not a great week

Bayern's tactical problems were compounded by a degree of weariness following a third match in the space of eight days. "Overall, we weren't lively enough to take anything from the match," Kahn commented, claiming it had been a "crappy week" despite the momentous victory in Milan. That was an opinion most likely shared by the good Sunday League hoofers and trotters in Sportfreunde colours, who collapsed to a 5-1 defeat.