Thomas Tuchel has used the term “harakiri”, a brutal form of suicide by disembowelment performed by Japanese samurai, to describe his Bayern Munich team twice already this calendar year.
After a limp 1-0 loss to Werder Bremen in January, Tuchel turned to the phrase to capture the self-harm inflicted by Bayern’s reckless attacking approach. Perhaps “kamikaze” would have been more appropriate.
Yet, there could be few quarrels with Tuchel’s scathing appraisal of his side’s first-half performance on Friday night. Freiburg sliced through the Bavarian behemoths time and again while racking up a 1-0 advantage that didn’t reflect the balance of chances. Bayern recovered to take the lead but were pegged back in a 2-2 draw by Lucas Holer’s 87th-minute equaliser.
With more ground lost to Bayer Leverkusen in the Bundesliga title race and a potentially season-defining Champions League tie against Lazio looming on Tuesday, here are the key takeaways from a shameful display.
The opening stages of any match provide outsiders with the clearest idea of a coach’s tactical approach. Yet, with Tuchel’s set of instructions still ringing in their ears, Bayern produced a first 30 minutes which their manager labelled “terrible”. The hosts fired off nine of the first ten shots on Friday, limiting Bayern to one off-target header.
“We played completely without structure, were far too undisciplined and not in our positions at all,” Tuchel fumed at the final whistle. “We had phases where our central defender ran behind the full-back. We did things that we had never trained before.”
Just nine days earlier, Bayern confirmed that Tuchel would leave the club at the end of the season. The frosty coach claimed that this “clarity brings freedom” but his players interpreted that a little too literally with a bizarrely chaotic start.
Tuchel may be on his way out and a prickly character at the best of times, but it would be wrong to say that he has lost the dressing room. After a half-time debrief with words that may have been sharper than a samurai sword, Bayern were much improved.
“Second half [was a] good half,” Tuchel noted, “with big chances, good spirit, much better discipline with much better quality in our match overall.”
Mathys Tel had fired the visitors level with a stunning strike from range before the break while Jamal Musiala danced Bayern into a deserved lead in the…
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