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Bundesliga title pretenders were battered by the champions but stole a draw and know now how much they must improve
It had promised so much, and yet had been such hard going. “It was,” said Leipzig’s coach, Julian Nagelsmann, “like a run in the forest without much football” for his team. For all the pre-match excitement that they might be facing Bayern Munich at the right time, catching them before they were settled into their season stride, much of this felt ominously familiar for those hoping for a meaningful Bundesliga title race again. The leaders versus the champions looked, for a large chunk of early Saturday evening, like the also-rans against the lords of the manor.
This was no evening for anybody to dust down their cliches about Bayern-Dusel, though – the luck of the perennial champions. Any flecks of fortune had been left back at Säbener Strasse, as was clear from the moment when David Alaba pulled a hamstring in the warm-up, leaving Niko Kovac to an impromptu rejig of his XI. Jérôme Boateng came into defence, with Lucas Hernández being pushed out to left-back. It proved to be a significant adjustment. Continue reading...