Of course, that would have been a nice punchline, a surprising twist in this story, if the saving goal had been scored by the player who had previously become the permanent saver. In any case, Maria Luisa Grohs ran into the penalty area, almost all FC Bayern players were there before one of the last corner kicks on Wednesday evening, one of the last chances to stay in the competition. The 21-year-old goalkeeper watched the high trajectory of the ball, moved towards it – but then nothing happened again, as practically nothing had happened the whole evening when the Munich team had approached the Arsenal goal in between.
After 1-0 in the first leg and 0-2 in the second leg, like last season, they were eliminated in the quarter-finals of the Champions League. The title in the most important European club competition remains an unfulfilled goal. Arsenal, meanwhile, are back in the top four for the first time in a decade, as is FC Barcelona, who beat AS Roma 5-1 in front of 54,667 spectators at the Camp Nou. “We gave up this game in the first 10, 15 minutes of the first half. Kudos to Arsenal, we weren’t clever enough to find a solution,” said Bayern coach Alexander Straus.
The Norwegian had gesticulated and shouted in the constant rain, but his grim look was enough to see that someone here was quite dissatisfied – he later made no secret of it in the dry. “Today some of our players didn’t reach the high level they normally have,” said Straus. “And we need that in games like this. But some days it’s like that.” With this criticism, he did not create a line of conflict with his team – there was consensus on this opinion. Lina Magull found it frustrating, Georgia Stanway saw one reason above all: “I think it was individual mistakes that cost us the win. We never really got the flow of the game going, caused our own problems and put ourselves under pressure .”
“We have to try to regain the momentum we had against Wolfsburg,” said Georgia Stanway
The 21,307 spectators in the Emirates Stadium saw one offensive wave after the other spill over into the Munich half. The Londoners kept up the pressure with consistent pressing, so that the opponents couldn’t even find their own rhythm. In addition, there were a few ball losses by Bayern – they were recently noticed with their calmness on the ball and a reliable defense, the best in the Bundesliga to date. The fact that captain Kim Little had to be substituted after 12 minutes through injury didn’t bother Arsenal in the least. A lack of precision and the strongly parrying Grohs prevented a clearer result, the final ratio was 15:5.
The shot was then unstoppable: Bayern goalkeeper Maria Luisa Grohs looks after the ball after Frida Maanum’s shot.
(Photo: Jacques Feeney/Imago)
Bayern had not expected such little participation. Even if they were warned by the second half of the first leg, in which Arsenal were already the better team, the starting position spoke for them. Shortly before Stina Blackstenius’ header to make it 2-0, Frida Maanum made the first clear announcement from 20 meters in the 20th minute. The precisely scored 1-0 was preceded by just as precise preparatory work, but above all a blatant bad pass from Bayern, which made all this possible in the first place and was representative of some negligence. “We were a bit shaken by that, which to be honest was disappointing that the team’s confidence went for a while after that,” said Straus. Because hadn’t the women of Munich built up that for weeks and especially in the past few days?
They traveled to London with a 14-game unbeaten run, seven of which they kept clean sheets. In addition, the hope of winning the title in the championship that had actually already been lost had returned: On Saturday, FC Bayern had prevailed against VfL Wolfsburg and thus conquered the top of the Bundesliga table. From a penalty and with a thin cushion of a point, but that didn’t matter so much, the self-confidence got a boost like that, in addition to the boost from the quarter-final first-leg win.
But, as it turned out, it was a status on pump that was no longer tenable given the lack of rotation opportunities due to various injury-related absences in one of three competitions. Above all, the absence of Giulia Gwinn (torn cruciate ligament) and Linda Dallmann (ruptured syndesmosis ligament) is noticeable. Tactical changes after the break, such as changing from a back four to a back three, contributed to an increase in performance and a little more opportunities to finish after the break, but the gasping wasn’t enough. “We will work through that and have to try to regain the momentum that we had against Wolfsburg,” said Georgia Stanway. And so at FC Bayern they had to console themselves with the fact that they still had chances of winning the DFB Cup and the championship. At least in the Bundesliga, opponents like Arsenal are no longer waiting.