By beating Arsenal FC on Wednesday, Thomas Tuchel has become the first Bayern Munich coach since Hansi Flick to advance to the semi-finals of the UEFA Champions League. While the road to Berlin ended in humiliation and the Bundesliga campaign has been one stumbling block after another, the Bavarians paradoxically find themselves in an incredible position to win Europe’s premier club competition.
How did it come to this?
The answer, frankly, lies with the coach himself. Against Arsenal, Tuchel showed the world what his Bayern team is capable of — and it wasn’t pretty. Set up to defend on home turf, Bayern Munich allowed Arsenal to dictate play and set the tempo, only to strangle them out of a win before full time.
It’s a type of performance that is distinctly un-Bayernlike, yet it also yielded a result Bayern Munich fans have been demanding for years. The club is once again among the top four in Europe, courtesy of a style of football antithetical to its values.
What does this say about the current state of the club, and can it bring back European glory? Is that a trade that fans are ready to stomach? Let’s discuss that.
A change in strategy, not tactics
This is not a tactical analysis of the Arsenal game. There are others on this website who are far better qualified to do a tactical analysis of the win. Just for the sake of completeness, here is a short breakdown of the major steps Thomas Tuchel took to secure a win over the Gunners:
- Use Raphaël Guerreiro and Noussair Mazraoui to double team Bukayo Saka and shut down Arsenal’s right flank.
- Have Konrad Laimer stick to Martin Ødegaard like glue, limiting Arsenal through the center.
- Keep it simple in the final third, with crosses being the preferred method of creating chances.
The result was that Arsenal were unable to muster any threat on goal, so a a single bullet header by Joshua Kimmich was enough to seal the deal for the Bavarians. It’s the type of result that makes you think of Simeone’s Atlético Madrid or Allegri’s Juventus, not Bayern Munich. Yet, the important part isn’t the aesthetics — it’s the fact that it worked.
Moreover, the fact that Tuchel committed to this playstyle in the first place says something about what we can expect in the Champions League going forward. It means that Tuchel is prepared to make his team do whatever it takes to win. It means that no matter how badly the team performs in the Bundesliga, European games will remain a different story. Critically, it also shows the players are both capable and willing to buy into the coach’s vision, if only for the sake of the big-eared trophy.
Frankly, this is why a tactical analysis of the Arsenal game would not be appropriate for this occasion. If Hansi Flick or Julian Nagelsmann had been in charge, you could have unpacked the nuances of their setup and used it to predict tactical tweaks or upgrades for upcoming fixtures. With Tuchel, there’s no such point. His team has no base tactical framework, it’s all about countering the next opponent.
What carries over is the strategic philosophy — the decision to abandon the team’s “typical” playstyle for one that has the best shot at victory. This is a Bayern Munich team without identity, a team that is being taught to match itself to its opponent. It’s a team that gets outplayed by Heidenheim, but shows levels against the best Arsenal side in years.
In short, this Bayern Munich is turning into Real Madrid.
Madridification?
For years, Madrid have been the poster child of “suck in the league, win the CL.” Ignoring the fact that they’re winning La Liga this season, they have always been a team that does whatever is needed to beat the team in front of them. When facing the dominant Bayern sides of the mid-2010’s, they were content to sit back and hit hard on the counter. When facing the likes of Atleti or Juve, they could break them down with the required offensive pressure.
Yet they struggled in the league, because for all their adaptability, Real Madrid never adopted a concrete tactical philosophy like so many top teams of today’s era. They never had a coach like Guardiola or Klopp to instill the need to do things a certain way. This came to bite them in the league, where over the course of a long season, you need a solid tactical backbone to come out on top.
Bayern Munich under Tuchel seem to be transitioning from a philosophy-oriented approach to a results oriented one. Ruthless pragmatism is the name of the game. However, this is not some master-plan from the coach that he’s been concocting since day one. It’s just the fallback plan after he failed to implement some semblance of unit cohesion in his side.
It’s simply easier for Tuchel to set his team up game-by-game from now on, with the players and tactics specifically tuned to counter the next big team on the list. This won’t help Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga, but the Bundesliga is already lost so who cares? This also won’t help Tuchel build a foundation for the future, but he’s getting sacked in the summer so he doesn’t care about that.
This is a strategy born from the circumstances. It’s pure pragmatism. Will it work?
The original vs the pretender
Trying to out-Madrid Madrid is a bold approach, but it looks like the one Tuchel will use. The question is whether it’s even possible to “out-Madrid” this current Madrid team, especially with the quality of players they have.
Against Arsenal, for example, Tuchel could say he had a distinct advantage in player quality, experience, and mentality. The same cannot be said against Real Madrid.
In times like this, you wish Tuchel had developed some form of tactical identity for his team to fall back on — something they could rely on to secure victory. Last year, Guardiola’s Man City outplayed Carlo’s Madrid with all the their principles intact. Bayern Munich had the quality to do something similar, if such a tactical framework existed.
Can Madrid be beaten with pragmatism? Tuchel will have to find a way. He did it in 2021 with Chelsea. If he can’t, then Bayern Munich will lose, and all this ugly football will have been for nothing. People only forgive this kind of football if it results in silverware. Without that end result, it becomes an exercise in frustration for everyone involved.
That is the cost of pragmatism. The joy of watching Bayern Munich play football.