Off the Crossbar: How a toilet trip triggered Bayern Munich’s 12th man debacle against SC Freiburg — also, Corentin Tolisso is hurt again

By now, everyone has heard that Bayern Munich had a 12th man on the field against SC Freiburg and there have been numerous reports detailing the situation.

Ultimately, one of the reasons this whole mess happened probably had little to do with Kingsley Coman’s jersey number, the third referee, or anything with Kathleen Krüger.

You see, this whole fiasco might have been spurred on to avoid a calamitous scene on the pitch. As it turns out the whole chain of events started when Corentin Tolisso, who entered the match as a sub in the 62nd minute, was hit with a — you guessed it — Flaming Spear and had to leave in the 85th minute.

We’ve detailed how the Spear is undefeated (remember when it took down Eric Dier at Tottenham Hotspur?), but the urgency in which Tolisso had to leave the pitch (you know that feeling) created chaos — and let’s be honest, a brief period with an extra player was well-worth the price to pay compared to the alternative.

Tz captured what happened with Tolisso:

A substitution and substitution is commonly referred to as the “maximum penalty”, but this time the change was probably not for performance reasons. Tolisso was accompanied from the field by team doctor Peter Ueblacker. Bayern coach Julian Nagelsmann explained at the press conference that the Frenchman was probably in poor health: “It was vague. Coco ran [into the dressing room] because he had stomach problem.”

The fact that Nagelsmann didn’t even fully even seem to delve into the details of why Tolisso needed an abrupt exit shows the magnitude of the issue. When you get hit with Spear, there is no time for talking.

There is only time for duck walking and prayer.

If the root cause for this debacle turns out to be Tolisso’s bout with internal distress then all governing bodies should shrug at this and move one.

No one...and I am mean no one...would have wanted to see Tolisso stay on the pitch.

An unfortunate sidenote to this story was that somehow, in the 23 minutes he was on the pitch and not duck walking, Tolisso tore a muscle fiber. Here are the details from Bild:

Corentin Tolisso (27) was absent from training on Säbener Straße on Monday morning. According to BILD information, the Bayern star has torn a muscle fiber again and will be missing again for around three to four weeks. Bitter for the French: It’s his fourth muscular injury this season!