FC Bayern Forum

He was involved in 2 car accidents so far... and once sentenced with 18 months in prison, suspended sentence.

My two-cents:

- Thiago played a sort of dribbling regista role, everything we did went through him. He was the center of the team. Most of the time he dictated play just from the front of defense, behind Xabi most of the time.

- Defense was AWFUL. Badstuber is extremely rusty and Feldhahn was awful. Javi and Rafinha were good, as expected. Bernat was kind of useless.

- Ribery is still a genius and will probably start whenever fit. Green did nothing.

- Contrary to other comments here, I thought Xabi was pretty bad. He lost many balls unnecessarily and didn't do much. Age or rustiness hit him hard.

- Overall, we looked very disorganized, but that is to be expected from an early friendly.

Formation was:

---------Ribery-Green
---------------Xabi
------Alaba---------Lahm
--------------Thiago
Bernat-Bads-Javi-Rafinha
--------------Ulreich

- Width was alternatively provided by the fullbacks and the wide midfielders (Lahm and Alaba). FBs and Wide MFs took turns, one going into the box diagonally and the other staying wide to support width. I think this will be replicated with Lahm and Alaba as FB and Renato+Vidal as wide central midfielders (this was a key principle in Carlo's Milan).

- Thiago and Ribery were given freedom to roam a lot.

With everyone available, I would expect this to morph into something like:

-----------Lewy
--Ribery-----Müller
-Renato-------Vidal
---------Thiago
Ala-Hum-Boa-Lahm
----------Neuer

Or Ribery behind Lewy and Müller
Or Ribery out and Javi in Thiago's role and Thiago on Xabi's.


Sent from my XT1064 using Tapatalk

I am completely at a loss to explain why Feldhahn is even practicing with this team, he made a few nice dribbles past high pressing defenders, but mostly because no one expects a CB to pull a CF dribble move when there's no one between the ball and the goal, fancy ass crap like that will only result in dangerous breakaway counter attacks most of the time, and it's the kind of stuff you bench a CB for.

He gets a yellow card on his 2nd touch, he then fails miserably trying to clear the box with his head TWICE in a row, resulting in the 2nd goal, and then he flings a leg out to deflect a shot that Ulreich likely would have saved easily. So maybe if he's 20-23 and you're hoping he will develope into a world class defender, maybe you play him in an ICC meaningless friendly match, maybe for 30 minutes at the end of a game you're winning already, but the guy is 29, he's NOT going to get any better, why waste valuable game time with the best club in the world on a guy that has zero, absolutely zero future at first team.

Would have been better to put Michael Jordan out on the field, atleast the Chicago fans would have been happy to see MJ back in sports.

I can't remember the last time Bayern pulled crap that made me shake my head, oh wait yes I can, It's like a horrible flash-back to the dark days of Van Gaal

No need to make such a fuss about Feldhahn starting, he's just filling in for Hummels and Boateng. Javi and Bads will surely be the backups to those two. We just needed a body to fill the lineup so Alaba could fill in for Vidal/Renato.

Sent from my XT1064 using Tapatalk

it was awesome to be there in person!!! I'm not going to judge to much since it is a pre-season game and honestly the team is missing very important players. now I have more motivaiton to go to Munich and watch a meaningful game in person.

This is were I was seating at last night

nm462272 wrote:Thiago and Xabi were both looking really good (Thiago especially - very excited to see him play outside of a Pep team)

Alonso had a very ugly tackle that led to his yellow card though.

PunkCapitalist wrote:No need to make such a fuss about Feldhahn starting, he's just filling in for Hummels and Boateng. Javi and Bads will surely be the backups to those two. We just needed a body to fill the lineup so Alaba could fill in for Vidal/Renato.

Sent from my XT1064 using Tapatalk

I wish we had Gotze instead of Feldhahn though.

Can't see tweet? Click here!

FCBayernMunchen wrote:

nm462272 wrote:Thiago and Xabi were both looking really good (Thiago especially - very excited to see him play outside of a Pep team)

Alonso had a very ugly tackle that led to his yellow card though.

Yeah, was a pretty nasty one. Not sure what he was thinking. Still, it seems like Xabi (I guess everyone, for that matter) has more flexibility in passing and movement outside of Pep's rigid system.

why did the game go to pens?

bayern1982 wrote:why did the game go to pens?

Since it's part of the International Champions Cup they wanted to determine a winner I guess.