There are also running routes that Julian Nagelsmann is not interested in at all. For example, the walking routes between the training ground, airport and stadium. Nagelsmann then just looks, “that I have my suitcase with me”, then he “gets on the bus, then I get off where it stops, then I get on the plane”. Then there’s another bus after landing, “then the bus driver says at some point, get off now, Julian, we’re there. And then I’ll get off”.
On the other side of the field, someone else makes the match plan, and Bayern coach Nagelsmann, 34, can live with that very well.
Nagelsmann noticed that many in the capital were more interested in their flight route than in their 4-1 (2-0) victory for Bayern’s league game at Hertha BSC on Sunday evening – because he was asked about it. Why don’t the Bavarians fly to BER, but to Schönhagen in Brandenburg with propeller planes?
For fear of spending another night on the plane at the aimless major airport like back then, on the way to Qatar for the Club World Cup? But: “I have to disappoint you, these are things that don’t interest me at all,” said Nagelsmann after the game. However, he then pushed one of his stories afterwards: “I noticed that we were flying to a relatively small airport, that the pilot braked sharply, so I thought: Did they shorten the runway?”
The fact that the instinctive rhetorician Julian Nagelsmann can also captivate his audience with topics that don’t interest him – there have recently been more reasons for this than he could have liked. Sometimes his opinion on the subject of vaccination skepticism was asked, sometimes on medical details of the lungs, sometimes Nagelsmann himself radioed Corona-infected from his kitchen. He also said something about Qatar. And when the words then flow out of him, a twinkle in his eyes usually indicates that somewhere in the left hemisphere a punch line is paving its way that he will not let slip. So on Monday then imageHeadline: “Nagelsmann: I thought, did they shorten the runway? The totally crazy Bayern flight.”
Nagelsmann says the first half was “a bit stronger than in the first leg” – and that was “perhaps the best of the season”
You sometimes have to push a few shifts aside at the public Nagelsmann before you get to the heart of what occupies him around the clock: football. But this topic was not settled as quickly as on Sunday evening in Berlin. During the week, the Bayern coach had radiated an almost childlike joy that a few concentrated training days are now possible, that all that is behind him for the time being: vaccination theater, Qatar theater, Corona theater. The airport? Oh well.
The short version of the 4:1 success in Berlin went as follows: In some of the last games, Nagelsmann was not satisfied with the counter-pressing – that is, the running and attacking of the opponents immediately after they had won the ball. There would have been a lot of excuses, for example that Nagelsmann had to put up a 16-year-old Mr. Wanner and a 19-year-old Mr. Tillman, but excuses are not his thing, dissatisfaction is. And now? Almost all regular players were back after the recent outbreak of Corona, and Leroy Sané, Kingsley Coman and Lucas Hernández were back on the pitch from the start. And there they apparently had a clear mission: Show! Me! counterpressing!
Very satisfied with the performance of his team: Julian Nagelsmann, here with assistant coach Dino Toppmöller and sports director Hasan Salihamidzic.
(Photo: nordphoto GmbH/imago images/Nordphoto)
Afterwards, Julian Nagelsmann sat in the catacombs of the Olympic Stadium and said: “I’m very happy with the game.” The first half was “a bit stronger than in the first leg” and it was “perhaps the best of the season”. What he liked: “Our players were extremely sharp in counter-pressing.” And when you later heard his players talk, they sounded like busy students who wanted to do everything the teacher had told them to do correctly. Manuel Neuer: “It was clear to us that we would be up front.”
Joshua Kimmich: “We wanted to focus on counter-pressing. That was good today, so we had a lot of high ball wins.” Thomas Müller: “We were looking forward to the game because we knew what we were going to do today. The counter-pressing was a bit better in the first half, we didn’t allow almost anything. We squeezed Berlin from the start. A very nice afternoon of football.”
Oh, how beautiful counterpressing is!
When asked, Nagelsmann spoke in detail about how a coach manages to constantly rush a team of proven fine feet at the opponent with a knife between their teeth: “a) you have to train it,” he said, “b) you need it Players who are up for it, and c) it’s like this: If you see how high our ball possession phases are throughout the season, then there are often only a few minutes of net playing time in which we have to defend.” Means: counter-pressing costs energy, but saves a lot more. Because if you let it slide, “the distances become much, much longer than if you do these five, six, seven seconds after the opponent has won the ball quickly and actively.”
According to statistics, FC Bayern is the eleven with the most high ball wins in Europe
In addition to the analysis of ball possession and net playing time, Nagelsmann also has a second statistic to hand as evidence: “We are the team in Europe with the most high ball wins,” he said in Berlin, “you sometimes forget that when you hear Bayern Munich that we just defend very, very well in the opposing half.”
And based on this uncompromising attitude at crucial moments, the rest seemed to fall into place as a matter of course. In the end, Corentin Tolisso put his head down (25′) and Müller his foot (45′), sometimes Sané used a mistake by Hertha keeper Alexander Schwolow (75′), and finally Kimmich, who played impressively, served Serge Gnabry for the winning goal (79th). Bayern seems to dominate their opponents effortlessly, as if by the way, but a large part of the work is done in the few seconds when they don’t have the ball.
4-1 in Berlin, another six points behind Dortmund – so you really don’t have any worries anymore? There was that flash in Nagelsmann’s eyes again, he still wanted to place a word. His assistant coach, Xaver Zembrod, has “sidestring angina,” he reported, and then even more lightning: “Looks like Bryan Adams, but talks like Rod Stewart.”
So at the end of the evening you also knew this: Julian Nagelsmann really doesn’t care a damn about music!