[insert here your obligatory complains about BL's lamest marketing bate aka #DerKlassiker. srsly, why not Bayern vs Kaiserslautern then? as klassik as it gets)) fact is, it's always been Bayern vs whoever is up for the task, otherwise folks here are too lazy to care about Bayern's megalomania in everything that concerns tableware. it's like: chill, m8, you already have, like, 20 or whatever is the exact number of these saucers, it's more than enough... but Bayern usually has no chill. so it is what it is, there are no politics or over stuff mixed up with football like in Spain, there are just Bayern and these who fed up with them (meaning everyone else with the exception of Bochum maybe)]
so, yeah, I feel sick. make no mistake, this is s not a 'title decider' — well, it can be for Bayern if they'll not lose, which is doable from their POV — it's more of 'if where would be something we could put a title race label on'-decider. and going back to the marketing thing it would be better for
we'll drop points somewhere else eventually like against Mainz or Hamburg (like we always do), or Köln, or Frankfurt (I already can see that 0-0 draw as ugly as you can imagine) but the job will be done.
...feel sick and have no idea what to expect from the actual match. so many possibilities! but it should be a close one, I think. probably a draw. or a win with a one goal margin. have no idea ofc. but Guardiola away record against decent teams (and I guess we all can agree that we have a decent team) is somewhat questionable and he's usually more conservative and predictable playing important away matches. could play into our hands, how should I know. it's a shame he'll probably chose Xabi (who was rested against Mainz) over Vidal. Vidal is easier to drag out of position and right positioning is the key for Bayern (I totally jinxed it here, right? watch him scoring a screamer or smth). they also have this thing with leaving their wings exposed in a past few weeks, so there will be some opportunities. anyway, a good game of football this is all I hope for. If you are into tactical stuff, take a look at Rene's preview, but in the end it's like he said: Ein Duell zwischen Tuchel und Guardiola ist wie das Horoskop: Sobald man mit spezifischeren Angaben Prognosen ausspricht und trotzdem Recht behält, war es nur Glück.
I feel sick, but feeling sick won't make me forget why am I writing this in a first place. I wanted to say how mighty I'm impressed by everyone. every player, everyone from the coaching staff, physios, the team behind the team, our awesome media department, the fans who are always great be it Westfalen in the Topspiel floodlights or proverbial — thanks, Nuri! — cold rainy Wednesday night in Darmstadt. I can hardly imagine the amount of constant everyday work by all these people that was required for us to have the opportunity we have now. to win practically every match, to keep everyone healthy (!!!) and to give almost everyone (even youngsters) their playing time — it's like blindfolded rope-walking over a river full of hungry piranhas or something like that))
I feel sick and nevertheless I know I can rely on the lads to do the best they can. and on Tuchel, who said some interesting stuff I wanted to share here:
You can see how much pressure Bayern are able exude on their opponents when you have the ball AND when they have the ball. We have find our flow. We need automatism. It's about evading their pressure. Changing angles in the passing game. Bayern are trying to force rash decisions - which usually causes imprecision. We need to be precise while taking quick decision. We cannot be fully prepared. Bayern have too many options to adjust within a match. Everything has to work automatically for us tomorrow. We cannot afford to think. Everyone has to be perfectly in his position. their pressing game is what amazes me the most: how quickly they can get the ball back, to terrorize the opponent into their own box, to make other team fear the ball. but it can be a liability too. 'cause once the pressure is beaten there is a vast amount of space and vast amounts of space are usually difficult to defend. hello there, #captainobvious.
We are looking forward to the best possible Bayern team. Which is good. We want to beat the best in our own stadium. [...] We have a lot to win in this constellation. I hope everyone will see that we have a lot to win and are playing at home. this is how you should look at this fixture. this is the right attitude.
The reverse fixture showed that you can lose by a high margin because of small errors. But you can learn from that. The 5-1 loss in Munich has made into what we are now. And we are very happy with what we are now. You could see our improvements in the detail in games against Mainz or Augsburg following that loss in Munich. thanks god, he said this, I was so tired of all these too passive, spineless, limp etc. characteristics given to our reverse fixture. we were as active as it gets. we literally lost because of our high (!) backline (consisting — let me remind you — of Sokratis the rightback, Bender (second match in his career on that position), Hummels (not exactly covering himself in glory at this phase of the season) and Lukasz playing leftback for the first time in his life). two longballs and a soft penalty killed us there. if anything this match can be called the dumb and dumber (meaning Roman and Hummels). brave but dumb — that was our approach. but whatever. and YES - this loss was really... important and educative in a way that it was almost necessary. and you could see how much the next match in Mainz meant for everyone. one of my favorite of the season, probably. we didn't dominate it at all, we even had less possession, I think, and it was a close one, but we were concentrated, worked as a team and won in the end. all good.
to wrap it up:
p.s. kudos to Mainz (my maaaan Jairo, Super Jhon <333333) and Martin Schmidt who is a great guy and a good coach. kudos to Gladbach, Leverkusen and Frankfurt (more love for Armin Veh's musical jacket, pls), too.
p.p.s. anything but a win will leave me extremely disappointed :P go all the way, if you started imo.
the part with cool musicso, that more or less all the nonsense I wanted to say here. leave you with real all-times classic below. see you on the other side.