Ole Werner’s first Bundesliga season as coach of RB Leipzig is going well. However, the former Bremen player does not particularly enjoy matches against FC Bayern. Even though things could have turned out very differently this Saturday.
Ole Werner has already prepared a team for a match against FC Bayern Munich nine times. His record? Apart from the DFB Cup coup with Holstein Kiel (6-5 on penalties in the second round in 2022/21) and a surprise 1-0 win with his former club Werder at the Allianz Arena on January 21, 2024, it is extremely bleak.
More precisely: 1-6, 1-2, 0-4, 0-5, and 0-3 with Bremen, and now with his new team RB Leipzig, after a 0-6 defeat on the first matchday, a 1-5 defeat on this 18th matchday at the start of the second half of the Bundesliga season.
The bitter thing this time, however, was that the Saxons had gotten off to a good start and had deservedly led 1:0 for a long time. Even FCB coach Vincent Kompany had to admit after the game on Sky: “They really caused us problems in the first half and were clearly the better team. It felt like they were twice as good as us.”
Raum: “We lost our heads”
In the end, however, it went completely the other way. RB failed to capitalize on a few more chances, partly due to the strong Manuel Neuer, and looked poor defensively, especially against Munich’s outstanding substitute Michael Olise (three assists, one goal).
Accordingly, Werner’s conclusion was mixed: “We put in an almost perfect performance in the first half. The only thing missing was effectiveness in front of goal – we should have been leading by more at half-time.” And then? The Leipzig coach’s assessment to ARD: “We had the chance to take something away or even win until the 80th minute. When you create chances like that against Bayern, you simply have to take the lead. But after going 1-3 down, we got into an open exchange of blows, which was not what we had planned.” It’s hard to look good against FCB’s quality – “and that’s how it turned out.”
“Today’s result has two sides to it,” David Raum analyzed afterwards. “We played well for the first 70 minutes, we played courageously, won a lot of balls and created chances. In the end, though, we still suffered a clear defeat at home. That shouldn’t happen to us, we have to analyze it critically.” The RB captain elaborated: “We lost our heads, and we have to take responsibility for that.” Nicolas Seiwald agreed: “We lost our structure at the end. We were only thinking offensively, and you can’t do that against Bayern. In the end, we fell apart a bit, and that can’t happen to us.”
