Julian Nagelsmann got up from the bench and started walking. Get out of your coaching zone. With that gait that is his own. Always a bit wide-legged. And with hands that dangle to the right and left in front of his hips, as if a revolver had to be drawn at any time. Only this duel on Sunday evening in the Munich arena was now over. Nagelsmann ran to Niklas Süle, he went to Leon Goretzka. Then he made the big round. Past ten field players and a goalkeeper, who you wanted to see that their facial expressions sometimes looked as if they had just survived an uncanny encounter of the third kind.
And in a way they had. The shouts of “away win” fell silent in the stadium. And: “Hurray, hurray, the Frankfurters are here!”. 87 out of 90 minutes they didn’t feel like that at all. At least not the players, but the fans do. However, there were two numbers on the display panel up in the arena, very unmistakable in their message. Bayern Munich: 1st Eintracht Frankfurt: 2nd
And so Julian Nagelsmann crept out onto the lawn after a memorable game that, after almost exactly 100 days in the service, completed his debut as the new coach at Bayern: After a draw and ten competitive games in a row, he just had his first defeat as coach of the Munich experienced. After a game that actually only knew one direction, Bayern lost to a team that was barricaded in their own penalty area. And above all against the man at whom balls were fired today like in a shooting gallery: the outstanding Frankfurt goalkeeper Kevin Trapp.
Nagelsmann dances like crazy on the sidelines – but the game doesn’t go as expected
The evening did not bring a premiere for Eintracht as it did for Nagelsmann. But the memory of a feeling of happiness that the Frankfurters last felt 21 years ago in Munich. “We are disappointed, angry, whatever you want to say,” said Thomas Müller later: “Of course we failed because of our own effectiveness.” Small break. “Now there is nothing with Superbayers. Now we have lost at home too.”
As a sign of confidence in his Superbayers, who had a 5-0 win against Kiev during the week, Nagelsmann sent the same eleven players onto the pitch against Frankfurt. “Because everyone is fit, because everyone did it well,” he said before kick-off on the DAZN streaming service.
Nightmare in highlighter green: Frankfurt goalkeeper Kevin Trapp stopped Robert Lewandowski and FC Bayern not only in this scene.
(Photo: Christof Stache / AFP)
Frankfurt coach Oliver Glasner had promised “not to go on a Sunday excursion in late summer temperatures for coffee and cake”, but to deliver “a real fight” to Bayern. But apart from the correctly predicted temperatures, it really didn’t look like it. 240 seconds were played, as Alphonso Davies played around the Frankfurt Almamy Touré in his half like a flagpole, irresistibly pulled to the goal line – his cross put Robert Lewandowski just over the bar. It didn’t look like coffee and cake, especially because the people of Frankfurt gathered around their own “box”, as Nagelsmann would say, with so many people – sometimes eight or nine – that they ran out of cakes much too quickly were. No fight far and wide.
Instead: A cross from Gnabry, which Kristijan Jakicc, instead of clearing, even drew fire on his own goal. And Kevin Trapp saved a Eintracht for the first time that evening, which was symbolically in reverse.
However, such a block of unity has to be cracked first. Müller shot on goal from a distance, as did Leon Goretzka. Nagelsmann danced wildly on the sidelines. His gestures suggested that from his point of view over the supply lines from midfield, the balls into the opposing box did not run fast and smoothly enough. Bayern switched to the popular means of the endless ball relay. But it was fitting for the early phase of the game that the first hit resulted from a mistake by Eintracht. Martin Hinteregger shot at Goretzka, who carried out an attack-like counterattack against Lewandowski himself (29th).
For a long time Nagelsmann did not bring a new player – not even Jamal Musiala
Now it didn’t help, Frankfurt had to play too. At least a bit. The fact that Eintracht even managed to equalize almost in return was astonishing. Hinteregger managed to make amends by heaving a corner kick into the net, passively flanked by Dayot Upamecano and Süle (32nd). The astonished Nagelsmann immediately had an Ipad handed to him on the bench for review. He saw: a so-called defense in the room, in which no one had felt responsible for a goal scorer.
Because it was now 1: 1 again, Eintracht fell back into its passive phlegm. To surprise again shortly before the break: Djibril Sow hit a high ball into Touré’s barrel, a wonderful assumption, a twist in the hip – Manuel Neuer with a brilliant save. The unity, 44 of 45 minutes as good as playfully non-existent, almost got into the lead.
What to do? Although his team did not do as well this time against the compact Frankfurters as they did against Kiev, Nagelsmann initially did not bring a new player. Not even Jamal Musiala, who has already proven many times how he can break through blockage situations with his yoga-like agility. So Frankfurt formed a black bloc again. And the Bavarians ran up. For lack of goals, at least the no less agile Sané deserved a special applause when he sprinted back like the dervish after a solo in the opposing penalty area and fought his way back for the ball.
Bayern didn’t do much wrong, but Eintracht did amazing things. Especially goalkeeper Trapp, who initially stuck his right foot into a Lewandowski header with a crazy reflex in the style of his handball colleagues. And shortly afterwards cleared a shot from Gnabry with a similar strength. 20 minutes before the end of the game had to give way for Musiala. Marcel Sabitzer also came for Süle. And Eric-Maxim Choupo Moting for Sané. It was Nagelsmann’s line-up for a final offensive.
But then Sow pursued a situation that had long been resolved. And Filip Kostic sank a shot that one has to trust against Manuel Neuer from such an acute angle.