The red card on Bayern Munich’s Dayot Upamecano was iffy at best and the team’s response wasn’t great, but it’s just one loss

At Bayern Munich, there will always be something to debate (hopefully civilly at BFW).

During Bayern Munich’s 3-2 loss at the hands of Borussia Monchengladbach, Dayot Upamecano got called for a questionable red card in the 8th minute that altered the entire trajectory of the match.

Was it soft? Yeah.

Did Alassane Pléa embellish a bit? Probably (despite his protests).

But was it a red card in the eyes of Tobias Welz? Yes, and that’s all that really matters.

(If you want my opinion, it was soft, but the play was risky — and therefore was always going to be a threat that a red card could be shown in that situation.)

The play itself was a risk.

The second Upamecano made contact from that position, he knew there would be a chance that things could go sideways. If Plea even took the slightest stumble down, there was always going to be a chance that Plea would hit the deck.

He did — and Upamecano paid for it.

Could Yann Sommer have made a different decision with his role in the play? For sure. Would he like a “do over”? You bet.

From that point, the game became all about Julian Nagelsmann and how he would adjust to being down a man. And yes, the boss made some mistakes with his moves that even he admitted.

The players, however, also did not perform at the best of their abilities, either.

Whether it was the compact schedule and heavy legs, too much rotation, or just a bad day to have a bad day, Bayern Munich never got on track (which is not shocking considering it was down a man for so long).

It was truly a “total team effort” to lose the match and the blame could be evenly distributed.

In the postgame melee, there was a ton of finger-pointing and frustration. It was directed at the referee, Nagelsmann, certain players, etc.

In the end, though, it was just one loss — a defeat that was played with Bayern Munich being down a man for almost 90 minutes of game time.

I didn’t like every decision that Nagelsmann made and I didn’t like every performance by every player. What I can say, though, is that it’s just one loss.

If the trend continues next week against Union Berlin, then we will have a post called the “BFW Vent Tent” and we can all wallow there to put the necessary figures on blast in a safe space.

Until we reach that point, though, let’s just remember this isn’t the first time Bayern Munich sputtered against Gladbach — and it won’t be the last.

Whether it was a true red card or not can be debated forever, but it went down that way in the books and with that, the Bundesliga title race just got a whole lot tighter.

Interested in more discussion of the game? Then why not check out our postgame podcast? Check it our below or on Spotify.

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