A 0-0 draw at home was perhaps not the strongest possible endorsement of Borussia Mönchengladbach’s new role as Bayern hunters in chief but in the red empire that is the Bundesliga, one is grateful for every small sign of a rebellion making a stand. By consensus the well-drilled Foals came closer than any team, anywhere, to administering a first defeat on Pep Guardiola and co this season in the Borussia Park on Sunday. Manuel Neuer needed to be at his best to stop a couple of lightning-quick counterattacks, one of which resulted in a shot by André Hahn that had the winger convinced the ball was going in. “The octopus” (Spiegel) in the Bayern goal dived down and stuck out his left hand to palm it away. “Without Neuer, Bayern would have conceded one or two,” said the Borussia midfielder Christoph Kramer.
The visitors were thwarted by the equally splendid Yann Sommer and also could have won the match on another day. It said much about the level of Borussia’s resistance that Philipp Lahm later thought that a draw was a respectable outcome. “We can live with a point against the second-placed team,” said the captain. Guardiola, too, expressed “pride” in his side negotiating their toughest match of the campaign so far far without suffering any damage. (During the match the Catalan had not been quite so calm, with the fourth official Bibiana Steinhaus bearing the brunt of his anger)
While the subsequent attempt to paint Gladbach as genuine title contenders seemed a little forced – “We accept our position,” the coach, Lucien Favre, replied with a smile after some aggressive questioning – the game did feel as if it had wider significance. Not so much for Bayern, whose successful defence of the title will be solely down to Guardiola’s motivational powers and knack for clever rotating but certainly for Gladbach, a club inching ever forward towards former glory days.
Ever since Favre took over in 2011 to save the team from the drop and lead them to a sensational fourth-placed finish the following season, the side have become the latest poster-boys for the joys of organic growth, German-style. The recipe is simple, finding the right ingredients less so. Take one tactically astute manager, add half a dozen slighty-ahead-of-the-curve signings like Sommer, Hahn, Kramer and Max Kruse, bulk up the squad just enough to deal with the odd high-profile defection (Dante, Marco Reus) and sprinkle everything with fantastic support and a strong sense of togetherness. Voilà.
The title will be beyond them but finishing in the Champions League places would mark the next milestone on their long journey back to greatness. Sunday’s draw against “the best team in the world” (Hahn) served as a huge confidence booster. Gladbach’s transfer dealings were also validated yet again. Favre was able to rotate five players from the starting line-up against Limassol (4-0 home win) in the Europe League without any ill-effects. The Foals are in no mood to belittle that competition. This is only their second taste of international football since 1997.
Their valiant performance on Sunday should serve as a final warning, if one was still needed, that the Bundesliga elite will have make room for another team at the top. Getting into Europe’s top competition again will prove a lot more difficult for Leverkusen (5th), Schalke (11th) and Dortmund (15th) after their slow – and in the last case disastrous – starts to the season. Third-placed Hoffenheim (1-0 v Paderborn) and VfL Wolfsburg (3-0 over Mainz) look also poised to take advantage of the big boys’ weakness. Favre will not mind if someone else takes over the (extremely flimsy) mantle as Bayern’s challengers over the coming weeks. The Swiss mastermind would probably prefer it if Borussia could make a well-timed, late challenge from the “depths of space” (as the saying in Germany goes), like the mythical long-haired Gladbach midfielder Günter Netzer in the 70s, to achieve their goals. The Bayern stalemate showed, however, that his side’s brilliance has become too pronounced to be hidden in the shadows any longer.
Talking points
• In the ABC of Bundesliga coaching, “P” stands for “Pretending to have all the answers”. Jürgen Klopp is well past acting Mr Clever, however. After Dortmund’s sixth defeat of the season, 1-0 at home to Hannover 96, the BVB coach admitted that there were no easy explanations, let alone solutions for the team’s ills. “The reason why things turn out the way they turn out at the moment has to do with our long bad run,” he said. In other words: the crisis has become self-perpetuating. Dortmund had enough chances to stop the rot but low confidence, as Marco Reus intimated, and the first signs of disunity (Mats Hummels blamed Roman Weidenfeller for Hirohsi Kiyotake’s free-kick goal before retracting the criticism the next day) have now joined up with mere bad luck to exacerbate the malaise. Dortmund travel to Bayern next. Maybe the ability to approach the match as underdogs will snap them out of their domestic stupor.
• Frankfurt v Stuttgart was out of sight as far as spectacles go – no wonder Frankfurt forward Haris Seferovic reached for invisible binoculars to keep up with the goal-glut. Unfortunately, the linesman felt his authority somewhat undermined by the gesture, and the Swiss striker was sent off shortly after the Stuttgart captain, Christian Gentner, had scored the ninth and last time during a maddening 90 minutes. “Heaven and hell were very close today,” said VfB’s Martin Harnik. “It was a game between outstanding and catastrophic,” was Alexander Meier’s verdict. “It’s enough to make you go nuts,” said Stuttgart’s coach, Armin Veh. Thomas Schaaf kept a cool head, though. The Frankfurt manager quickly switched into Thomas Schaaf mode to bemoan “bad individual mistakes at the back”. The former Werder manager has, in all likelihood, seen more bad individual mistakes from his teams than anyone else over the years. An ill-conceived experiment with three at the back that was abandoned after 20 minutes was his idea to bring “stability” to proceedings.
• Speaking of Werder, the 1-0 defeat by Köln put an end to Robin Dutt stealing a living as a Bundesliga coach. Viktor Skripnik, the U23 coach, and club icon Torsten Frings will take over the bottom-placed club. “It’s all a dream for me,” said Skripnik, the former Werder midfielder. “Every soldier wants to be general and every manager wants to develop further.” The Ukrainian certainly has the backing of the supporters: 1,000 turned out to see his first training session.
Results: 1.FC Köln 0–1 Bremen, Augsburg 2–0 Freiburg, Hertha 3–0 HSV, Frankfurt 4–5 Stuttgart, Hoffenheim 1–0 Paderborn, Dortmund 0–1 Hannover, Leverkusen 1–0 Schalke, Wolfsburg 3–0 Mainz, Gladbach 0–0 Bayern.
