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Bayern Munich won comfortably at the Allianz Arena, pasting 15th place SC Freiburg to the tune of four goals to none. Dante opened the scoring in the 19th minute with a powerful header off a cross from Diego Contento before Xherdan Shaqiri added two more in the 34th and 42nd minutes to make the game 3-0 going into the halftime break. The second half was much more equal before Claudio Pizarro added his third goal of the season to set the final score at 4-0. While 4-0 seems like an absolute schellacking (and it is in many respects) Freiburg were extremely excellent on the evening with several chances flashing inches wide and one goal undeservedly ruled offside.
Some immediate thoughts from the match:
- SC Freiburg were very excellent in the first half, effectively disrupting Bayern's attacks, with a strong defensive organization. There only real breakdown was the unfortunate first goal from Dante. Bayern Munich's second and third goals were great counterattacks from Bayern Munich. They were tackling well, dirsupting Bayern attacks, and using good small fouls to slow down the Bayern Munich attacks. That 3 goals got put past them was more a testament to Bayern Munich capitalizing on the few errors they made with their overwhelmingly superior quality.
- Bayern Munich have pretty much reverted back to a 4-2-3-1 style formation, but it does contain some subtle tweaks from the one Heynckes employed, including most importantly three pressers in the defensive phase.
- Xherdan Shaqiri was an electric sparkplug for Bayern Munich today. He was all over the pitch with darting runs and clever exploitation of space. His brace was well representative of
- Toni Kroos got loose on two different counterattacks, one of which was ruled back for offside, and it was great to see the young German streaming down the pitch. His dribbling is absolutely sublime and his speed is quietly underrated. Guardiola has built up Kroos' passing and awareness to incredible levels, but it's nice to see what's under the hood has gotten better too.
- Freiburg should have gone into halftime with a goal and a spring in their steps, but it was wrongly disallowed because the AR is a big meanie who doesn't like seeing competitive matches.
- Bayern Munich brought on Bastian Schweinsteiger, Mario Götze, and Daniel Van Buyten in the second half and reverted the 4-2-3-1 they employed to such excellent effect all of last year. They even played their standard two banks of four with two pressing forwards which we haven't seen in a long time. It's testament to the strength of that formation along with the quality Freiburg displayed going forward all game.
- Claudio Pizarro was understatedly excellent all day long and it was nice to see him tuck Bayern's fourth goal into the side netting in the 88'.