Something seemed to break here, and it was not just Xabi Alonso’s proud unbeaten record over Bayern Munich. For Vincent Kompany’s side are cruising to the Bundesliga title and now they are cruising to the Champions League quarter-finals too. They may well sign Bayer Leverkusen’s best player in the summer, but here they played him off the park. It smells like game over, and in more senses than one.
This week the Bayern director of sport, Max Eberl, made an eye-catching comparison. He compared Alonso and Kompany to Pep Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp, the coaching duopoly that shaped modern football for almost a decade. Bit soon for all that, most people reckoned, but it feels just a little less fanciful now. The bloke who got Burnley relegated to the Championship may just be the next big thing in European coaching.
Alonso himself may well be on his way to more moneyed pastures soon, and so perhaps this is the end of a golden chapter in Germany’s great new rivalry, its new superclasico. After three inconclusive instalments of this epic duel already this season, the fourth was utterly unequivocal; the fifth next week will probably end up being an afterthought. And while Alonso’s Leverkusen have been rattled before, while they have been beaten before, not since the Europa League final in May have they been outmanoeuvred like this, frustrated to the point of genuine head-loss.
And Bayern were good value for this too, throttling Leverkusen’s strikerless threat well before the raw Matej Kovar dropped a simple cross and the wretched Nordi Mukiele was dismissed for a second yellow card. Harry Kane – subjected to a little local criticism of late for his attacking work rate – offered the perfect response by brilliantly heading in the first goal and smashing in the last. A defence well protected by Joshua Kimmich and Leon Goretzka gave up just three shots.
Above all Bayern were just smarter, positionally disciplined and physically dominant, well prepared for Leverkusen’s game of organised chaos. There is of course a danger in explaining away everything through tactics. You can lose with a great tactical plan and win with a bad one. But as Bayern slowly turned the screw, you could see how far Kompany has already developed as a coach, even in the nine months he has been here.
There was a clear Guardiola influence in the way the full-backs tapered inwards to snuff out the counter, in the way Kompany opted for the pure straight-line speed of Kingsley Coman over Leroy Sané or Serge Gnabry on the left. On the other wing, he has in Michael Olise a player currently reaching at the limits of his talents and grasping only fresh air. There are times during this stunning breakthrough season when Olise has touched Arjen Robben levels. That is not hyperbole.
“It was our fault,” Alonso said afterwards. “Today everything went against us. We were ready for a hard game, but we did not control the small details and so our pain was self-inflicted.”
Did Bayern score a little psychological blow by so publicly stepping up their pursuit of Florian Wirtz this week? Certainly Wirtz cut a subdued figure this evening : aggressively man-marked by Kimmich, his lines of supply cut off, Leverkusen simply not getting enough of the ball to allow him an influence. Amine Adli, deployed up front alongside Wirtz, has started just five times this season through injury and looked unsuited to a game of this intensity.
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Then there was Kovar, a product of the Manchester United academy, and clearly still with plenty of the club DNA in him. Alonso has been rotating him and Lukas Hradecky in and out of the starting lineup all season, with a clear view to Kovar taking over at some point. But throwing him into a Champions League knockout at the Allianz was a huge gamble, and as Jamal Musiala pounced gleefully on his fumbled cross, it was a gamble that had clearly failed.
Leverkusen pretty much self-destructed after that. A pointless petty challenge on Coman by Mukiele gave Michael Oliver no choice but to show a red; Edmond Tapsoba came on and immediately grappled Kane to the ground to give away a penalty.
And yet. In the dying seconds João Palhinha missed an open goal to make it 4-0 after a sublime piece of skill by Musiala. Was that the moment that left the door open? “It’s not over until it’s over,” Alonso said defiantly. And despite everything, you would rather a tiny sliver of hope than none at all.
Source: theguardian.com
