“It feels like a never-ending horror film,” said a completely shocked Leon Goretzka after the final whistle.
FC Bayern Munich's 3-2 defeat at mid-table Bochum on Sunday capped a nightmarish week with three defeats in a row for the perennial German champions, which have plunged the club into a deep crisis.
This strangely unfocused and disorganized Bayern team, now eight points behind still-unbeaten Bayer Leverkusen, seems unable to keep up with Xabi Alonso's men, let alone overtake them. After the 0-1 away defeat against Lazio last Tuesday in the first leg of the round of 16, their future in the Champions League is also at stake.
Coach Thomas Tuchel put on a brave face in stoppage time last night. Unlike Leverkusen (losing 3-0 last weekend) and Rome, he felt his team did not deserve to be beaten by Bochum, who started the day just six points clear of the relegation zone and in the The second leg of the season was beaten 7-0 by Bayern in September.
“It was Murphy's Law – everything was going against us,” said Tuchel, referring to defender Dayot Upamecano's second dismissal in five days after he committed a foul in the penalty area and his strikers missed three great chances. “Today I can’t blame my players. If we played this game again, we would have a high probability of winning it.”
Look at Bayern's expected goals (xG) figure of 3.35, the fact that they took 27 shots compared to Bochum's 10 and had more than two-thirds of the possession, and Tuchel had a point.
But success in Munich is not just defined hypothetically. Had they secured a late draw or an even later win against Bochum, their incoherent performance wouldn't have been much less worrying.
Midfielder Goretzka's assessment was more accurate. “There are individual mistakes that we make – and too many of them,” he told the domestic broadcaster DAZN. “At the moment I think we have to question everything.” When asked whether he still believes that Bayern can win the Bundesliga this season, his verdict was even clearer: “Not at the moment. I’ll be honest about that.”
For the umpteenth time since Tuchel's reign 11 months ago, the team was a mediocre mix of some half-decent periods and periods of timid fragility. That famous Bayern DNA, a deep-rooted belief in their own greatness, seems irretrievably buried under an ugly patch of collective insecurity – or perhaps lost in a sense of foreboding.
Instead of drawing strength from their run of 11 straight league titles, these players appear to be gripped by the fear of becoming the team that will bring this golden era to an end.
Perhaps Tuchel is simply unlucky to have come to the inevitable end of a historic period of dominance. Bayern were already poor enough not to win the championship last season, but somehow missed out on another championship when Borussia Dortmund squandered everything with a draw at home to Mainz on the final day of the season.
Tuchel feels the cold at FC Bayern (Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images)
This season they are objectively a better team than that – more stable defensively and more efficient up front thanks to new signing Harry Kane (25 goals and counting in the league after scoring late yesterday to halve the deficit) – but still vulnerable to bafflingly bad absences that threaten to end their quest for trophies in 2023/24, even though there are still three months of football to play.
There is talk internally that too many big, well-paid personalities have lost their hunger. But every single player has lost form and confidence in recent weeks, which further highlights Tuchel's role.
The 50-year-old former Dortmund, Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea manager failed to develop much of a bond with most of the players in the dressing room after quietly questioning their qualifications on many occasions. “He undermined everyone,” a senior member of Bayern’s management told The Athletic on condition of anonymity due to the unstable situation at the club.
As countless managers have discovered before him, tactical ability counts for little if you can't keep the dressing room on your side.
There were further signs of disillusionment on Sunday evening when midfielder Joshua Kimmich, who had been substituted in the second half when the score was 11 against 11, exchanged angry words with assistant coach Zsolt Löw at the end of the game. “It's a normal thing as long as it doesn't go too far, and it hasn't gone too far,” Tuchel said of the incident.
Kimmich was sent off after 62 minutes against Bochum – and was not happy about it (Lars Baron/Getty Images)
However, the situation between him and the team is so bad that club bosses consider the situation essentially untenable. The only real question is whether the results will allow Tuchel to finish the season.
Bayern have already considered their former coach Hansi Flick as an emergency replacement, but some power players at the club are unsure whether the 58-year-old can repeat his winning streak from 2020 and early 2021 (six trophies) after terrible results the German national team, which includes half a dozen Bayern players.
The club would much rather muddle through with Tuchel and use the time until the summer to target a big name who will reshape and revitalize the entire squad for next season. Leverkusen coach Alonso, who played in Bayern's midfield from 2014 until his resignation in 2017, is unsurprisingly their preferred candidate.
Tuchel is now safe, at least for another six days. Managing director Jan-Christian Dreesen confirmed to reporters in Bochum that Tuchel would “of course” sit on the bench for the home game against RB Leipzig next Saturday evening, but also warned that “such oaths of loyalty usually do not last longer than a week.” “
A fourth defeat in a row could well force the board to pull the plug, even without a savior at the ready. Bayern last lost so many games in a row in April and May 2015, but the team coached by Pep Guardiola had already secured the title by then.
It used to be complained that the Bundesliga season was over in March. This year it shouldn't take that long.
(Top photo: Lars Baron/Getty Images)