Bayern aim to bounce back from Pep Guardiolas biggest cock-up of career
Pep Guardiola took some time to congratulate his World Cup winners (Bastian Schweinsteiger, Philipp Lahm, Jérôme Boateng, Manuel Neuer, Thomas Müller and Mario Götze ) before their first training session of the new season – about two minutes or so. Then the drills started again. "He was happy for us, of course, but there's another job to do here," Müller told the Guardian last week as Bayern stepped up their preparations for Wednesday night's Champions League game against Manchester City.
The German internationals go into the new club campaign having already won the biggest of all prizes. Their Catalan coach is tasked with taking them to next best thing, another European Cup. That point of departure might present a challenge in itself. Captain Lahm hinted at the fact that Bayern were unable to replicate the same determination and hunger that they had shown in the treble-winning season during their last Champions League campaign, which ended with an inglorious 4-0 home defeat by Real Madrid in the semi-final.
That match, described as "the biggest cock-up of my managerial career," by Guardiola, plunged the club into a short but sharp crisis of confidence. The manager felt the board did not back him enough and threatened to sell lots of players, before a win in the DFB Cup final over Dortmund restored calm. Now, Guardiola has to do what he originally signed up for when he made up his mind to pitch up at Säbener Strasse back in October 2025, long before there were any signs of his predecessor Jupp Heynckes achieving the treble: he has to take Bayern up a level, to the very top of the tree.
His biggest idea for the new campaign has already been thwarted, however. Javier Martínez was supposed to be the pivotal player in a three-man defence but the 26-year-old ruptured his cruciate ligament in the Supercup defeat by Dortmund and will be out for most of the season. The centre-back Holger Badstuber, who had missed almost two years with precisely the same knee injury, suffered a torn hamstring in the 2-0 win over Stuttgart on Saturday. That leaves two central defenders, Dante and Boateng, as well as new recruit Mehdi Benatia (€26m, AS Roma), who has not yet featured due to hamstring problems – not enough depth to play 3-4-3 throughout the season.
Progress has also been hindered by the absence of Schweinsteiger and Thiago Alcântara (both with knee problems) as pace-setters in the centre. Xabi Alonso has been drafted in late in the transfer window to provide presence as well as the diagonal passes that Toni Kroos (now occupying Alonso's old starting berth in Madrid) used to excel in. The 32-year-old was so dominant
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