Hansi Flick speaks about Bayern Munich’s recent rough patch

Despite topping the Bundesliga table six points clear of second-placed Borussia Dortmund, it hasn’t been all smooth sailing for Bayern Munich under Julian Nagelsmann this season. Defensive struggles continue to loom large and they’ve already lost four matches this season, which is the amount of league losses they had in the entirety of last season en route to their ninth consecutive Bundesliga title. The recent slip-up at VfL Bochum highlighted the problems that still need sorting out and RB Salzburg also exposed a lot of Bayern’s defensive weaknesses in leg one of the Champions League round of 16 tie.

In a recent appearance on Amazon Prime’s coverage of the UEFA Champions League match between Chelsea and Lille, former Bayern — and current Die Mannschaft — manager Hansi Flick offered some of his thoughts on how things have gone this season for Bayern thus far. “The quality of the team is there, Julian [Nagelsmann] is a fantastic coach. They’re getting back on track. I’m confident that they’ll end a successful year,” he said when he was asked to give an assessment on Bayern’s recent weak patch (Sky Germany).

Photo by L. Theising/FC Bayern via Getty Images

Earlier in the season, Bayern responded to losses to both Eintracht Frankfurt and FC Augsburg in the Hinrunde with streaks of wins across all competitions, but they’ve all sputtered a handful of times in the Ruckrunde. The start of the Ruckrunde wasn’t aided at all by Bayern’s COVID-19 outbreak, combined with the amount of players that were unavailable through injury, resulting in the 2-1 loss to Borussia Monchengladbach. The 4-2 loss to Bochum was assuredly a low point in the Ruckrunde, and the unconvincing performance in Salzburg immediately after the aforementioned shock result at the Ruhrstadion mounted more pressure on Nagelsmann.

For Flick, he doesn’t really see the recent slip-ups as anything to be overly concerned with. Even his Bayern that secured a treble and went on to complete the sextuple from the 2019/20 season had their own share of mishaps in what was a truly incredible season. “It may not be going so well now. You just have that sometimes,” he said. Shock results happen in football when you least expect them, and Bayern isn’t impervious to this, so in Flick’s eyes, it’s just about rolling with the punches when they come and learning from the mistakes.