Bayern Munich’s first opponents of 2025 have been confirmed as Red Bull Salzburg.
The German record champions will travel to the nearby Austrian city and play the 17-time Austrian champions on the 6th of January, five days before the Bundesliga restart against Borussia Mönchengladbach. Bayern will thus be closing out 2024 and opening 2025 by playing a Red Bull club, with the last match of the year scheduled against RB Leipzig.
This is not the first time that Bayern have played Salzburg over the winter break. In 2014, Salzburg made a statement by demolishing Bayern 3-0. Of course, a friendly is only a friendly, and it did not deter Bayern from winning the Bundesliga in record time that season, with a DFB-Pokal win and a Champions League semifinals run to boot. The two sides also faced each other last January and played out one heck of a goalfest, which ended in a 4-4 draw.
This friendly was probably made possible through sporting director Christoph Freund, who was director of Salzburg before he moved to Munich. The game will prove to be a barometer to see how well prepared the team is for the new year, although again, a less than ideal result should not be taken too seriously either; see the aforementioned defeat in 2014.
The worst part of the Salzburg friendly, however, is the fact that it will again be paywalled behind FC Bayern TV Plus, which means that many fans will again be deprived of the chance to watch the game just like they were in the summer.
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