Bayern Munich certainly does seem to have unfortunate bad luck season after season in the injury department.
While Thomas Tuchel’s tenure as manager of the Rekordmeister was underwhelming as a whole, the amount of injuries he had to face within the past season and a half did not make his job any easier, and a handful of key players missed out on a large chunk of vital matches across all competitions.
In Bayern’s attack, Serge Gnabry was one of a small handful of players that missed a decent amount of matches last season through injury. In total, Gnabry missed a total of 25 matches across all competitions for Bayern last season, ultimately causing him to miss out on being called up to the Germany squad by Julian Nagelsmann for the Euros.
After taking one step forward in recovering from his forearm fracture towards the beginning of the season, it was another big step back when he suffered a significant muscle injury that came back shortly after he had marked his return to action early March. Due to being plagued with injuries all season, he was unable to provide key goals for Bayern at the end of the season like he was in the 2022/23 season, which at the time had convinced Bayern’s bosses of reconsidering making him an option for sale last summer.
Looking back on being hampered with injuries last season, Gnabry recently explained in an interview for Süddeutsche Zeitung (via @iMiaSanMia) that he cannot really put his finger on what caused him to suffer the problems he experienced. For him, it is just part of the game itself and part of the process that unfortunately derailed him. “If I knew what the reason was, I would say it – and change it. You do everything you can to live and train professionally, but at the end of the day, football is a contact sport and muscle injuries are part of it. It was really very disappointing how last season went. I was in good form during pre-season and had set myself high goals. In the five or six years before that, I had hardly been injured,” he explained in a recent interview (via @iMiaSanMia).
Looking forward to this season under a new manager in Vincent Kompany and a new attacking addition in Michael Olise from Crystal Palace, Gnabry will have to work even harder to fight for a place in the team, but that is a challenge he is ready for. He certainly hopes injuries do not derail him in the beginning of the season like they did for the 2023/24 campaign, but that is, of course, never a guarantee in football.
Looking for more thoughts on why Bayern Munich might have lost out on its pursuit of Xavi Simons — and what we learned from it? What about some talk on how fans should be feeling at this point of the preseason? Good, then we have you covered with the latest edition of the Bavarian Podcast Works — Weekend Warm-up Show. You can get the podcast on Patreon, Spotify, or below: