Lothar Matthäus impressed with Bayern Munich

Bayern Munich are flying high after winning the DFL-Supercup and the first game of the 2022/23 Bundesliga season, a 1-6 blowout win away to UEFA Supercup hopefuls Eintracht Frankfurt. Many are optimistic about Bayern’s performance in other games, and it rubbed off on none other than Lothar Matthäus himself.

The 61-year-old ex-player, now a pundit, is impressed by how the Bavarians are faring and is convinced that the loss of Robert Lewandowski to FC Barcelona no longer hurts the team. “It almost gives the impression that Munich are even better without Lewandowski,” wrote Matthäus in his Sky column (as captured by Abendzeitung) after Bayern’s 6-1 start to the Bundesliga at Europa League winners Eintracht Frankfurt and the 5-3 win in the Supercup against DFB-Pokal winners RB Leipzig. “In fact, there is more joy in playing.”

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Lothar is also of the opinion that although the system that was built around Lewandowski was successful, other players have proved that they can step up and play and attack more freely.

“The system was tailored to Lewandowski, and it was also very successful, after all it’s not a handicap if a player scores 50 goals,” Lothar said. “However, every player now can show themselves and breathe a little. You can tell that everyone plays a little more freely and has more freedom. In addition, people don’t stick to their positions as much and you have a lot of flexibility on offense.”

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Bayern currently have a knack for losing steam after 60 minutes, but Lothar said that it’s totally fine and overestimating Bayern isn’t advisable. “It’s completely normal that a team doesn’t go full throttle with such scores, but also saves a little strength for the coming weeks and months,” Lothar pointed out. “But I’m sure that this team can also show the performance over the entire duration of the game if it has to.”