Film Room: Inside Bayern Munich’s Champions League collapse to FC Barcelona

Bayern Munich’s Champions League tilt against FC Barcelona this Wednesday was a spectacular game of cat-and-mouse — one in which the Bavarians even held a clear upper hand, for a spell.

So how did Bayern end up as helpless prey — and 4-1 losers — in the clutches of former coach Hansi Flick and a rampant Barça side?

Let’s review.

Barça rolls the dice…and wins

It’s hard to believe, but this is only Year One of the Flick era at Barcelona. The former Bayern and Germany men’s national team coach has the help of an impressive stable of La Masia talent, but that isn’t all.

Under Flick, the transformation has been instantaneous. This edition of the Barça team presses relentlessly, and pushes the defensive line up to the half to compensate. That left ample space in behind, which the Bavarians seemed to salivate immediately at the possibility to punish. And that, in turn, left space behind on the other side…with the two teams posing the question to one another: who will get punished first?

As it happened, it was Bayern who got hit inside of one minute. Joshua Kimmich is a step late and a step wrong in reacting and Raphinha gets the better of him:

An unlucky break? In some ways. But throughout a first half characterized by Bayern ascendancy, it was the younger Barça side’s gambles, however dicey, that looked wiser and more calculated.

Take a look at Barcelona’s aggressive pressing structure, which posed Bayern’s veteran keeper Manuel Neuer some real challenges in build-up at times — but also left wide open options should Bayern manage to play out of it, as Neuer does here:

Flick’s calculation appears twofold: one, that Neuer would be forced into the occasional mistake (and he was, giving the ball straight away at one point in the first half). Two, that Bayern couldn’t make hay with all that real estate in the wide areas, as getting the ball to a player in that position still left a lot of work to be done — and distance to cover.

That tended to be the case but the Catalans can thank their lucky stars they weren’t punished more frequently. Bayern was frequently its own worst enemy in the early going, spotting the spaces and pinging vertical balls over the top to nobody, rather than the raking cross-field passes that would have presented actual danger, and which looked like it was in the gameplan anyway.

There is also the question of Vincent Kompany’s lineup, or perhaps more accurately his available selections — as in the earlier example where Neuer finds Michael Olise all alone on the wings. The result is an immediate 3-on-1 overload with potential daggers in behind…but 35-year-old Thomas Müller, nor Harry Kane, were the speedsters to best fit this tactic.

TUDN/YouTube

TUDN/YouTube

Kane does make the CBs-splitting run here but doesn’t have the pace to present lethal danger, and his touch lets him down to make for an easy save from Iñaki Peña. Additionally, while Guerreiro’s has a decent angle for this pass, the left-footer was less effective an option on the overlap down the right. Flick may have regarded Bayern as lacking the personnel to really make them pay. If that was the gamble, he was right.

Bayern really did have Barça where it wanted

When the Bavarians kept their composure though, they really did have Barcelona scrambling. Not for nothing did Harry Kane put the ball into the back of the net twice in a matter of minutes — and even despite the early Barça goal it was Bayern with the clear upper hand and on the offensive for a huge chunk of that first half.

The Bavarians, when patient, were able to work the ball well and draw in the Barcelona press to the point of overcommitment — and then launch switches of play from deep, with help from Kimmich, dropping into the back line to alleviate build-up pressure, and Harry Kane, with his trademark precision.

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Forget the midfield — Flick’s compact structure prevented clean ball progression through the center of the park anyway — Bayern preferred to sling damage from the back. Here’s Müller pointing out the free man, Raphaël Guerreiro, with the right-back’s opposite number Alphonso Davies charging into space on the opposite flank. Center-back Dayot Upamecano picks the former…

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…and the result is a clean break-away for Michael Olise. Now Barça is scrambling to get back, and not only Müller and Kane but Davies and Serge Gnabry are set to launch more arrows than Barça’s scrambling lines can account for.

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But here is Flick’s big brassy gamble bearing fruit. Olise isn’t quite the burner that Leroy Sané is, and despite the collective aahhh that shuddered through the stadium as he was played through, took near ten seconds to arrive inside the box. And when he did, he proved to be less than the stone cold Champions League killer Sané has been in recent years — trying to thread a cut-back through a thicket of bodies instead of lofting a cross up for Kane, Bayern’s heading meister, or a totally unmarked Serge Gnabry arriving at the far post.

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Decisions like that would haunt Bayern all night. But it was without a doubt the Bayern gameplan: squeeze Barça into one area of the field, ping the ball to the other, and run riot. Just look at Müller and Guerreiro both gesturing over their shoulder here towards Olise, all alone on the sideline, as center-back Kim Min-jae receives.

TUDN/YouTube

This one results in the Bayern goal. It looks neither crisp nor clean; Olise, hesitant as he was throughout the night, passes on Guerreiro’s overlap and cuts inside. He almost runs into trouble — in no position to take advantage of the run Müller wants to make — before managing to find Gnabry running free for a second switch of play. The recently-restored German international makes no mistake in finding Kane central for a wonderful team goal.

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And that was the tale of the first half-hour plus. Barça struck first, putting Bayern behind the 8-ball, but it was the home side that was pinned back and hanging on for dear life. Somehow, the Bavarians just could not conjure a second.

The back-breaker

Let an opponent survive for long enough and they may just rise to deal you a knockout blow. That was Bayern’s hard lesson in the 36th minute as attacking midfielder Fermín López ghosted behind Kim to bundle over an assist for former Bayern hitman Robert Lewandowski to bury.

Justified shouts for a foul notwithstanding — Kim was within a hair of a deflecting header but was nudged in the back and perhaps slightly off his mark by Fermín — Bayern can only count itself architect of its own undoing. Probably one too many players was drawn ball-ward here towards the Barça back-line, which, not under pressure in any case, could enjoy its pick of options over the top.

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Kim’s ill-advised step forward, cleverly spotted and taken advantage of by Fermín, was likely in reaction to João Palhinha’s reaction towards the deep-dropping Marc Casadó, showing for the ball. The first pass goes out to the wing to Lamine Yamal, and by the time Palhinha shades back towards Fermín he’s caught in no-man’s land — with Kim scrambling. Gnabry here is occupied by an aggressively positioned Joules Koundé high on the wing and unable to help.

It was a shame as Bayern largely covered the Barça initiative well, despite the challenges posed by Flick’s highly enterprising attack. Lewandowski was able to drag Bayern center-backs far upfield — Upamecano in both examples below — but Kimmich was covering in time, equal to the runs of Barça’s speedy wingers, with Kim and Alphonso Davies also helping to account for Guerreiro’s advanced positioning on the right. If one player looks out of place here it’s defensive midfielder Palhinha, Bayern’s aggressive ball-winner, whom Barça easily played around.

TUDN/YouTube

Paramount+/YouTube

But in the pivotal moments, Bayern broke down completely. And if twice wasn’t enough, Barça drove home the dagger just before half-time, on this occasion working winger Raphinha into space only Guerreiro could cover:

TUDN/YouTube

Raphinha on Guerreiro was Bayern’s least favorable matchup of the night — one which Bayern tried to avoid when it could. And since Kim is not a speedster himself, it’s the more advanced Upamecano who has to try to return from his pressure on Lewandowski. The French international almost makes it back to put a boot in but Raphinha’s shot goes right through him and past Neuer…who, it must be said, had a miserable night.

Soul-crushing denouement

At 3-1 down despite flexing plenty of muscle, Bayern was down but not out coming out of the half. But Kompany’s men were rattled while Flick’s were out for blood — and they put Bayern out for good ten minutes into the restart.

It is a comedy of errors for which there is no good explanation. Bayern’s Olise claims the loose ball after a free kick near Barça’s goal, but as Müller gestures towards central options, simply dribbles into trouble and gifts possession back rather than patiently re-launching the attack. From there the counter is on, and Bayern’s retreating center-backs are left one too many problems to deal with:

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Upamecano and Kim are clearly preoccupied with the troubling image of Lewandowski rumbling through an open center — though Kimmich is actually covering here — and overlap onto each other as Raphinha ghosts in behind both of them. The Brazilian star’s touch was exquisite and so was his finish. Once more, Barça showed composure where Bayern had none.

The goal might also be in part down to another error in build-up. Bayern defensive midfielder João Palhinha — brought from the Premier League to be a physical, counter-disrupting presence high up the pitch — failed to be alert to the danger posed by Barça’s Pedri, who was first to the ball.

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Instead of combining with Müller to bracket Pedri and try to win the ball back immediately — a gegenpressing hallmark, you might say — Palhinha began tracking back to, as it turns out, nowhere. The ex-Fulham destroyer was never getting to Barça’s wing players and his defensive action only afforded Pedri the space and the angle to pick out Lamine Yamal in the open field.

Palhinha’s acclimation to the Bundesliga and to Kompany’s XI has been slow, and this start — which came only as the result of the injury absence of last season’s academy revelation Aleksandar Pavlović — was not a banner advertisement for his potential role in the side.

But with Pavlović and Jamal Musiala unavailable to start, wasn’t Kompany constrained in his selection? Yes — but the Bayern coach seemed to admit something had gone very wrong when, after the 4-1, he brought on no less than four subs at once: Leroy Sané and Kingsley Coman at wing for Olise and Gnabry, Musiala for Müller, even the out-of-favor Leon Goretzka for Palhinha.

The wholesale changes could not change Bayern’s energy, and perhaps the situation was too much for the players who looked overeager to prove right away that they had deserved to start.

Typified by this passage:

TUDN/YouTube

Sané — whose spot til now has been occupied by newcomer Michael Olise — frequently found joy on the wings and even infield, showing that Barcelona’s tightening defenses could still be exploited by a burst of creativity and pace. But like Sané himself, the recipient of this delightful pass, Coman, found himself tongue-tied when it came to expressing himself in front of goal. One, two, three, four touches too many, and the chances they carved out vanished in the wind.

Still…there were enough moments to make you think. What if it had been Coman’s pace Bayern had sent in behind in the first half? Or what if it had been Gnabry’s eye for goal that Sané found in the second? What if Bayern still had a dynamic two-way right-back like Noussair Mazraoui, now at Manchester United? What if, what if, what if?

Conclusions?

The extent of the defeat will feel cruel to the Bayern team for all the initiative it showed in the first half with a gameplan that, if less than flawlessly executed, did not appear as shambolic as the scoreline suggests.

But a football match is 90 minutes long, and on this stage, it is about nerves and reactions and courage besides.

In these measures Bayern fell flat on its face. Four years on from its famous Champions League win in Lisbon under Flick, the Bavarian reboot is sputtering at the races while Flick himself is shining like class eternal. It calls into question the coaching and transfer moves of the successive sporting regimes that have brought Bayern here — none of which really had anything to do with Vincent Kompany himself, they are just coming to roost in his time.

It will be up to Kompany to find solutions, in the tactics room and beyond. Because where, indeed, does Bayern go if he can’t? ◆

Looking for more our thoughts and analysis on how FC Barcelona dismantled Bayern Munich in the Champions League? Well, buckle up — this Bavarian Podcast Works — Postgame Show will be a ride that you will want a ticket for. You can check it out on Patreon, Spotify, or below:

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