Serious mistakes
Upamecano becomes a symbol of the Bayern crisis with his total failures
“Two very consequential fouls”: Dayot Upamecano
© David Inderlied / DPA
On good days, Dayot Upamecano is a world-class defender, but on bad days he drags the entire team down with him. The problem is: the latter has happened to him several times.
At the moment there is probably no one at FC Bayern who is in the current situation Don’t feel bad about the crisis. Players, coaches, board members – they are all likely to be frustrated, annoyed or perplexed in some way. The crisis is hitting its stride. In view of Bayern’s national dominance with eleven championship titles in a row, it can actually be called historic because an era is apparently ending. As is often the case, in such phases there is a protagonist whose achievements become a symbol of the crisis and (somewhat) cover up the formal crises of the others.
We are of course talking about Dayot Upamecano, the 25-year-old Munich defender. Upamecano achieved the feat of receiving a red card in two consecutive games and causing game-winning penalties in each of them. He first committed a serious foul in the Champions League game against Lazio last week when he kicked his opponent in the shin. Something similar happened to him in the game at VfL Bochum. A header duel with an illegal use of the elbow again resulted in a sending off and a penalty. The action finally put Bayern on the losing road.
Dayot Upamecano can be nightmare for any attacker
“Unfortunately, those were two very consequential fouls that he committed,” said coach Thomas Tuchel after the 2-3 defeat in Bochum: “That’s twice too impetuous, twice too aggressive. Unfortunately, because he’s ruining his own performance with it .”
Tuchel’s quote succinctly describes what Upamecano is all about. On his good days, the French international is a nightmare for every attacker: fast, strong in tackles, technically adept and confident in passing. On bad days he is exactly the opposite. Then the French international is easily overrun, misuses balls carelessly or plays terrible passes that make his defender colleagues despair. Or he goes into duels as clumsily as he did recently against Lazio and Bochum.
Julian Nagelsmann, his coach at RB Leipzig and Bayern, called him a “machine in defense.” The reason for the statement in spring 2022 was a series of serious mistakes in his first year in Munich. Nagelsmann publicly reminded the defender that a “simple solution” is sometimes better than doing it “super smart”.
Since Upamecano moved from Leipzig to FC Bayern for 42.5 million euros in the summer of 2021, Upamecano, who was once sent to Red Bull by Ralf Rangnick, has regularly followed up extremely strong performances with weak performances and dropouts that are difficult to explain. In his first year at Bayern, this was attributed to his inexperience, but the fluctuations in performance remained, even if the error rate decreased.
Tuchel was able to experience this right at the beginning of his tenure at Bayern, when his team had no chance against Manchester City in the quarter-finals of the Champion League. One reason for the defeat was that Upamecano produced errors like on a conveyor belt during the 3-0 defeat in the first leg in Manchester and caused Bayern’s entire defense to collapse.
Fatal misfires are more of a symptom than a cause
But just like a year ago, Upamecano is of course not the only player at FC Bayern who suffers from form crises and dropouts. However, it is in the nature of things that the mistakes of a defender (as well as a goalkeeper) are more noticeable or more serious if they result in a goal being conceded. They (often) outshine the weak performances of their teammates.
Upamecano’s fatal misfires in the current crisis are as much a symptom as a cause. The entire team seems deeply unsettled. After setbacks, it “falls apart into its individual parts,” as the “Kicker” analyzed. Important leading players such as Joshua Kimmich, Leroy Sané, Leon Gorezka and Harry Kane are in poor form. Kane alone missed two excellent chances against Bochum that could have decided the whole game in Bayern’s favor even before Upamecano’s mistake. After his justified substitution, Kimmich had nothing better to do than sit sulking on the bench and argue with assistant coach Zsolt Löw. In the game he lost the decisive duel before Bochum equalized.
Upamecano will miss Bayern’s next games in the Bundesliga and Champions League due to the red card suspension. After that he will probably have to fight his way back into the starting eleven. When it comes to the defenders at his disposal, Tuchel emphasizes that there is no hierarchy. But of course that’s not true. So far, “Upa” was in second place behind the Korean Min Jae Kim. Now he is likely to fall back to fourth place behind Matthijs de Ligt and Eric Dier.
Sources: “kicker“, “Southgerman newspaper“, “Eurosport“, “n-tv“, “Sports1“, DPA