Sometimes the numbers really don’t say it all. Mainz were on the wrong end of many of them as Sunday evening drew in, as you would expect for a visit of almost any team to the Allianz Arena, never mind a struggler. They had the lowest share of possession of any Bundesliga team in a game since the statistics were first recorded – 15%. When they did have the ball, fewer than 60% of their passes were actually completed. Are you sure you can face looking at the xG after that? Mainz logged a respectable 1.07, but Bayern Munich’s was a staggering 4.72.

And yet, even if the most deflating statistical confirmation of all is that Mainz are certain to begin 2026 bottom of the table (even with a game still to play before Christmas), they have every right to feel good about themselves, even after conceding a late penalty equaliser to the inevitable Harry Kane. In Urs Fischer’s debut after being appointed as the new head coach Mainz became the first team to prevent Bayern from taking maximum points at home this season, and the first last-placed team to take a point at the venue since relegation-bound Köln in April 2006.

Mainz have more time to work on their escape, and more reasons to feel as if they have something to work with. Forget any notion of a new manager bounce; nothing about this looked promising beforehand, from Bayern’s imperious season to not winning a Bundesliga match for going on three months, via the absence of their best player, Nadiem Amiri. Yet Fischer, healing his own Bundesliga broken heart in taking a first job since his painful split with Union Berlin 25 months ago, had practicality on his mind from the off with a 5-4-1 that rarely masqueraded as anything else. “We protected our goal with everything we had,” said Fischer, and the numbers certainly underlined that. Mainz ran a collective 133.55km, the second-highest team total since those records began some 12 years ago.

The enterprise extended not just to graft, but to stability and to seizing their moments when they arrived. After hitting the Bayern crossbar two minutes in it looked as if Mainz had had their fun when the teenager Lennart Karl, fresh of becoming the youngest player to score in three successive Champions League matches, tapped the home side in front before the half-hour mark. At that point Bayern, with RB Leipzig and Borussia Dortmund’s slips at earlier stages of the weekend, were heading for an 11-point lead at the summit. Yet rather than lying down and waiting for the avalanche Fischer’s men held firm. They even had half-time parity when their 18-year-old Polish centre-back Kacper Potulski, whose previous Bundesliga experience amounted to 90 minutes in last month’s 4-0 hiding at Freiburg, found space at the back post to nod in William Bøving’s free-kick.

It got even better. Lee Jae-Sung, who scored twice exactly one year previously when Mainz handed Bayern their first league defeat of last season, peeled off Josip Stanisic to glance a header past Manuel Neuer and into the far corner. Remarkably Mainz were in front and perhaps more remarkably, they held on to that lead for 20 minutes. The twist in the tale came when Potulski was suckered by Kane with three minutes of normal time to go, the England captain turning his junior opponent and hitting the deck the instant his shirt was grabbed.

Goalkeeper Daniel Batz and the sporting director Niko Bungert both complained about what the former told DAZN was “a cheap penalty”. The latter suggested it wouldn’t have been given by VAR had it not been called on the field, which might have been true, but there could be no real argument with the award. When Bungert went on to describe it as “very, very annoying”, that felt like the sweet spot.

Sweeter still was Mainz finding themselves in a position to bemoan the concession of two points rather than three, when even Fischer must have prepared himself for a flurry of post-match utterances that the ‘real’ season starts next week as the digestif to a blizzard of Bayern goals. Instead this was a day to offer new potential heroes like goalkeeper Batz, having played his first Bundesliga game since December 2023 against Borussia Mönchengladbach last time out, like Potulski (the second-youngest Bundesliga scorer for his club after his teammate Nelson Weiper), like Lee. Mainz have a noble history of miracle escapes from the drop and Fischer – after that spell in Berlin – has a history of miracles, period. The Mainz revival starts here.

Talking points

• If a muscle injury to Neuer, as confirmed by Bayern’s medical department, was a blow, that was the limit to the bad news for the champions. As is standard when we have the occasional Bayern stumble, the chasing packs failed to take advantage, if pre-emptively in this case. Leipzig went under in Berlin at Fischer’s old haunt – despite the enviable range of attacking options available to Ole Werner (and one of them, 19-year-old Tidiam Gomis, scoring his first senior goal within a few minutes of coming on) it was Union’s forwards who finally clicked into gear. Coach Steffen Baumgart had challenged his forwards to score for the first time since the 4-3 win at Eintracht Frankfurt in September – “luckily we have defenders who can score,” he had wryly observed pre-match – and Oliver Burke, Ilyas Ansah and Tim Skarke were all on the mark, much to the delight of the home fans who staged a 15-minute silent protest against Red Bull.

• For Dortmund one suspects their second-half going over at Freiburg, usually BVB’s bunnies, is the least of their worries. They led at half-time but Jobe Bellingham’s red card early in the second half for a last-man foul – Gregor Kobel later apologised for his poor pass which compromised the young Englishman – led to a torrent of pressure which only yielded Lucas Höler’s spectacular equaliser in the end. It did little to dissipate the tension of the week, underlined by Nico Schlotterbeck’s furious criticism of Dortmund’s substitutes live on DAZN after the poor performance against Bødo/Glimt.

• The outlook is healthier for those on the fringes of the Champions League race with Leverkusen and Stuttgart recovering from recent defeats. Leverkusen overcame a stubborn Köln in the derby, with the substitute Martin Terrier’s stunning scorpion-kick finish opening up the game for the home side in its final quarter to keep them fourth, and Stuttgart dismantling Werder in the late game in Bremen with a spectacular display of finishing led by Jamie Leweling and Deniz Undav. Sebastian Hoeness and his team are sixth, trailing Leverkusen (and fifth-placed Hoffenheim, who beat Hamburg 4-1), by just a point.

• Just above Mainz at the bottom was a beyond vital win for St Pauli – their first in 11 Bundesliga games having ended a sequence of nine straight losses last week – over resurgent relegation rivals Heidenheim, via two excellent goals from Martijn Kaars, overcoming the first half sending-off of the influential Eric Smith. Wolfsburg continue to move away from danger under the interim coach Daniel Bauer, securing a second successive win, 3-1 at Mönchengladbach, with Christian Eriksen assisting the second of Patrick Wimmer’s brace.