Manuel Neuer delighted with Bayern Munich’s dominant performance in 4-0 win over Borussia Dortmund

Manuel Neuer marked his second clean sheet since returning to action for Bayern Munich in their 4-0 Der Klassiker win over Borussia Dortmund. The win was exactly the response Bayern was looking for after their shock, 2-1 DFB-Pokal loss to FC Saarbrücken midweek, in what was one of their worst results in recent memory.

Bayern Munich has been knocked out of the tournament in the early rounds yet again; something that seems to have been plaguing them in recent seasons.

Against Borussia Dortmund, however, Harry Kane was the star of show, bagging another Bundesliga hat-trick on such a momentous occasion. Dayot Upamecano scored the first of Bayern’s four goals in the 4th minute with a header off of a Leroy Sané corner kick. For the majority of proceedings, Bayern dominated and were consistently dangerous on the counter attacks. On the overall balance when all was said and done, Bayern registered eight shots on target to Dortmund’s one.

Neuer really only had to make one big save, which came in the 56th minute when he denied Marco Reus from relatively close range after Dortmund had played a direct ball over the top. For a brief while in the second half, Dortmund found some success playing direct and over the top, but that was still really only the one save Neuer had to make.

After the match, Neuer expressed his delight with how Bayern performed overall, coming out of the gates with a point to prove after the midweek loss. “Der Klassiker stands for itself, no matter what happened before. All fans and players are looking forward to this duel. We showed ourselves from the right side today and got into the game well. The self-confidence, belief in ourselves, our distribution with the many spaces and our fast players on the attack – that helped us today,” Bayern’s captain explained (via Tz).

Neuer missed a lot of football with his leg injury sustained just after the World Cup with Germany last year, and every minute that he has been back on the pitch has been vitally important in terms of him getting fully back up to speed.

Thomas Tuchel has played him in every match since he marked his return in the 8-0 win over Darmstadt in the Bundesliga. Neuer knows just how important those repetitions are and he is not taking them for granted. “Every game, every training session, every action is important. I had to wait a long time for the first ball, but it went really well. I hope you don’t forget that. We will see that in the future,” he said.

Looking for more analysis of Bayern Munich’s 4-0 destruction of Borussia Dortmund? Check out our Bavarian Podcast Works — Postgame Show on Spotify or below: