There were winners and losers even before kick-off. The winners were cyclists, for example, who rolled comfortably in front of the entrance gates, while the losers were Bayern fans who were unfamiliar with the area and thought they could drive up to the stadium in their cars. Many of them were stuck in traffic and missed the kick-off for FC Bayern’s cup game at third division team Viktoria Köln, and they probably feared the worst: namely missing the first two or three Bayern goals. However, this emergency did not occur. The champion had to struggle for more than half an hour before he scored his first goal. In the end, the result was still sufficient: Bayern won 5-0 against the third division team, who had defended themselves honorably but, as expected, had no chance.
The latecomers didn’t miss any goals, but at least a football game that initially went very differently than everyone had expected. It took a few minutes for the outsider to lose his awe and organize a game that Bayern didn’t like. However, the man from Munich, who enjoyed the event the least, did not play at all: After just a few minutes, Julian Nagelsmann got up from his seat cursing, and soon the angry coach gave the impression that he wanted his players himself the next moment wake up and shake.
He might have started with Serge Gnabry, who lacked the necessary body tension. Within the first quarter of an hour, the national player allowed himself three sizeable careless mistakes, the third almost contributed to the outsider’s lead. The ball flicked by Simon Handle was in the goal, cheered loudly by the Viktoria supporters, but referee Matthias Jöllenbeck intervened – the shooter was just offside (20th minute).
The cup game at the third division gave Nagelsmann the opportunity to present the new pearls that the club had given him in the summer: Nouassir Mazraoui, Matthijs de Ligt, Ryan Gravenberch and Mathys Tel received the starting XI places that had previously been denied to them. Gravenberch and Tel in particular indicated that they had missed the competition through their conspicuous participation. Center forward Tel, who has been 17 since April, took up the position on the left wing, while Sadio Mané played in the center of the attack, but when Viktoria keeper Ben Alexander Voll’s goal was in danger, she didn’t count on the former Liverpool star. The young Frenchman scored Bayern’s first shot on goal after 13 minutes of play and thus created the standard motif for the next twenty minutes: Bayern shot hard and determined at the Cologne goal again and again – and goalkeeper Voll kept flying to where the ball was was. Like a black spider he fingered his prey. Joshua Kimmich, in particular, gradually stopped finding the goalkeeper’s flight parades funny.
The more often the 21-year-old Voll, a student at the Viktoria junior school, saved in dire need, the closer the leadership of the now overwhelmingly superior Bayern came. After 35 minutes they combined in the penalty area faster than the Viktoria defenders could see and in the end Gravenberch benefited with the shot to 1-0 and it would have stayed that way at the break had Tel not had a strong individual action just around the corner made it 2-0 after the final whistle. At 17 years and 126 days, Tel is the youngest goalscorer in the history of FC Bayern in a competitive game.
Now the 50,000 knew what happened next in the film, but that’s why all the Bayern fans came from near and far, and they weren’t disappointed in the second half: Mané (53′), substitute Jamal Musiala and another substitute Leon Goretzka (82nd) - back after a knee injury – staged a befitting victory.