Vincent Kompany’s team demand more of themselves than ever before. Next up: a huge test against PSG
“Y
ou’re hopelessly behind, you know there’s a big game in Paris on Tuesday. But that doesn’t matter. This game in Mainz is what counts. The coach finds the right words and the team reacts.” Bayern Munich hope that there will be games to come which define their campaign more than a straightforward win – statistically speaking – in a Bundesliga game with the title of champions already done and dusted.
Yet Max Eberl was right. In terms of finding the kernel of what has already made Bayern’s season an extraordinary one, of what might yet make it an exceptional one, this really meant something. Absorbed on paper, from a distance, it could be mistaken for more grist to the mill of uncommon numbers; keeping alive the possibility of a joint best-ever Bundesliga season in terms of points, and extending the record goalscoring season in the league campaign to a barely-believable 113 from 31 matches.
What Bayern’s sporting director was determined to underline during his appearance on ZDF’s Das aktuelle Sportstudio, the Saturday night German free-to-air television institution, was that his team and his coach had done something genuinely special on an obligation of a afternoon before the real thing, Tuesday’s trip to Paris Saint-Germain for a Champions League semi-final first leg of titanic proportions.
