Vincent Kompany makes his Bundesliga debut with a nervy come-from-behind victory for Bayern Munich over VfL Wolfsburg, capped by an 82nd-minute goal from Serge Gnabry.
Check out our Game thread, Observations, Match Awards, and Postgame pod if you haven’t already.
Now for some quick hitters:
- Michael Olise and Sacha Boey grabbed starts in the first Bundesliga game of the season. It will be interesting to see how much Bayern leans on these relative newcomers over the course of the year. Leroy Sané was not available for selection on the day, and Josip Stanišić just suffered injury — leaving the right-back situation already a little precarious.
- One player whose BuLi debut will have to wait: defensive midfielder João Palhinha. After all the hubbub over his year-long transfer saga to Bayern, how much longer will he need to get integrated into the XI?
- Thomas Müller’s appearance from the bench showed that Kompany is not afraid to change it up. The Raumdeuter came on for right-back Sacha Boey, requiring a reconfiguration of the setup that required a written note to fully explain.
- About where he stashed that note, though…
- One last positional battle to watch: the reportedly want-away Alphonso Davies at left-back versus Raphaël Guerreiro. Davies looks like he is staying this year but that is two very different styles of play on the left flank, with the Canadian owning the width on the wings and Guerreiro liking to tuck infield in spaces covered often by Jamal Musiala on the day.
- Kane, Musiala, and Gnabry all had strong performances. Bayern needed every bit of their attacking quality to scrape by with a win after conceding two very poor goals — and were lucky not to concede a couple more on top of that. Lovro Majer really pulled the strings and it looks like good things are in store for Wolfsburg this year under Ralph Hassenhüttl.
- Dominating games, conceding goals, nearly dropping points: what else is new with Bayern?
- Here’s how Bild rated the performances on the day. Leave your own thoughts below the jump:
Looking for more analysis of Kompany’s Bundesliga debut? We’ve got you covered — INNN and Samrin go in-depth with a discussion of the lineups, tactics, substitutions, individual performances. PLUS we also compare and contrast Vincent Kompany’s start at Bayern Munich to what Hansi Flick has done at FC Barcelona thus far. Listen to it below or on Patreon or Spotify.
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