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In the 16th matchday of the Bundesliga, Bayern Munich earned their 14th win of the season sealing their palce as the Herbstmeisterschaft of the 2013/2014 season. The team has now earned 44 points out of a possible 48 on the season. While Bayern's first goal was mostly luck, props go to Rafinha for chasing the over the top ball from Kroos down. There was nothing luck about their second, as Mario Götze gave us another example of exactly why he was worth €37M. While Hamburg was able to put together a great counterattack goal in the dying minutes to bring Hamburg back into the game, Xherdan Shaqri told them "No!" in stoppage time as he scored Bayern's third. Some notes from the game.
- For most of the first half, Hamburg were collapsed and compact but not structured well . die Roten should have been able to pick out a throughball. Instead, Bayern were focusing on building attacks from the central midfield to to wings to Mandzukic to stretch Hamburg who had largely abandoned the central midfield. The only problem was Hamburg wouldn't move far enough up field to make it a worthwhile endeavor and restricted the space for Mandzukic.
- The second half saw Bayern really attempt to stretch the field vertically and Hamburg responded, seeking the ball and the equalizer. It was overall a much more back and forth affair in the second half.
- Bayern Munich either score beautiful goals or awkward goals. There's not really any in between this year. On a related note, Mario Götze's are fun. Can we have more of them?
- Pierre-Emil Hojbjerg was very good in his 10+ minutes on the pitch. He needs to play on Wednesday over Kroos. The 23-year-old German looks absolutely gassed by halftime these days. Yes, the winter break is around the corner, but an injury now with nothing but matches against some (honestly) very inferior competition would be infuriating to say the least.