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| Bayern Munich’s captain Philipp Lahm, left, will retire at the end of the season and the club’s first-team squad relies on several players in their 30s. |
The final 120 seconds of Bayern Munich’s win at Ingolstadt on Saturday could not have painted a more apt picture of their season so far under Carlo Ancelotti. Just as Robert Kempter, the fourth official, readied his electronic board on the touchline to signal the amount of additional time, Arturo Vidal side‑footed home before Arjen Robben sealed the three points moments later.
The manner of the victory was smash-and-grab but one that also carried Bayern’s familiar air of ruthless arrogance.
As in narrow wins against Darmstadt, Freiburg and Werder Bremen in the last couple of months, it was another ponderous performance against opposition scrapping around the bottom of the Bundesliga, of which Bayern now sit seven points clear at the top. It was the type of performance that has become the norm under Ancelotti this season. But when they have been asked to crank out of first gear, they have done so emphatically, as shown in their comfortable disposal of RB Leipzig in December. The reigning Bundesliga champions have another chance to show their true colours against Arsenal in the first leg of their last-16 tie against Arsenal at home on Wednesday.
“There is no need to be pessimistic,” Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the Bayern chief executive, said after the 2-0 win on Saturday. “We have seen the team can step it up at the right moment.”
Bayern sit top of the Bundesliga but not exactly pretty under Ancelotti, who remains increasingly calm amid the storm surrounding him. The Italian has presided over several under‑par Bayern performances since he took over from Pep Guardiola last summer. They are, though, unbeaten in their past 11 competitive matches and have lost just one league match all season.
“I have managed almost 1,000 games from the bench,” Ancelotti said last week, with an age-old smile. “The criticism cannot surprise me.”
Ancelotti could do with Bayern turning it on against Arsenal. Teams have begun to smell blood in Bayern, and as Manuel Neuer said recently, opposing sides have sensed an opportunity to garner more than just pride from their recent meetings.
Bayern have looked tired this season, perhaps no surprise after three demanding years under Guardiola, who spent hours fine-tuning tactics and on detailed video analysis. Ancelotti has entrusted his players with more responsibility, allowed them to breathe and given them a little more freedom. There is a worry, however, that Bayern are perhaps too at ease, too relaxed, under Ancelotti.
“I did not want a revolution, the team does not need a revolution,” Ancelotti said. “The main change is we press a bit more intermittently and we try to play more directly, more vertically.
“Football is not just about the aesthetics. Football is also about results, tactics, passion and attitude. You can not always play well but sometimes show other qualities.”
Ancelotti has a point, and the “Godfather” tag that has followed the ice-cool coach across Europe, en route to lifting the Champions League on three occasions, could yet yield a treble-winning season. “When you watch Vito Corleone in The Godfather do you see a weak, quiet man or do you see a calm, powerful man in charge of his situation?” Ancelotti asked in his perfectly-titled autobiography, Quiet Leadership.
In many ways, the calming presence of Ancelotti is just what is needed at the moment, during a time of upheaval at Säbener Strasse. The club captain, Phillip Lahm, gave Bayern a headache they could have done without last week after confirming to journalists in the bowels of the Allianz Arena that he will retire at the end of the season, in the aftermath of the DFB Cup win against Wolfsburg. He also revealed his decision to reject the opportunity to become the club’s sporting director.
Rummenigge and Uli Hoeness, the club president who reassumed control this month, were aware of his decision but did not expect Lahm to volunteer the information to the world’s media. Lahm has previous of causing a stir. He gave an unauthorised interview to Süddeutsche Zeitung in 2009, in which he urged the club to support under-fire manager Louis van Gaal, earning him a €10,000 fine. The Dutchman won the domestic double that year and he is now widely credited for sowing the seeds for Jupp Heynckes and Guardiola.
Lahm’s slow-burning exit might prove to be just the jolt Bayern needed this time around too. His decision to end his contract, which had been due to run until June 2018, prematurely has amplified doubts over the long-term structure of the club and darkened the clouds over Ancelotti’s reign to date.
In-keeping with Bayern’s fervent mia san mia – we are who we are – ideology the defender, who has been at Bayern since the age of 11, is not content with second best. Lahm unexpectedly quit his national side five days after lifting the 2014 World Cup and says he trusts his “inner senses” now too.
Through no fault of his own, Ancelotti has inherited an ageing first‑team squad, void of the next batch of Bavarian blood. Xabi Alonso, another who will retire this summer, is 35, and beginning to be bypassed in the middle of the park, while Franck Ribéry and Robben are both 33.
Bayern’s trump card has long been the threat of their wingers, from Zé Roberto a decade ago to Robben in more recent times, but neither Kingsley Coman nor Douglas Costa regularly replicate those same standards.
It is difficult to see where from where the next Bastian Schweinsteiger, Thomas Müller, David Alaba or Lahm is coming. Müller has been horribly out of form too, with one league goal this season.
The hope is that the new state-of-the-art training complex for academy players at Ingolstädter Strasse, due to be completed this summer, will develop a new conveyor belt of talent. And with Lahm on his way out, Bayern still not only need to replace Matthias Sammer, who quit as sporting director last July, but discover new leaders too.
Last year the club spent £27.5m on Portugal’s Renato Sanches, described by Ancelotti as the most powerful player he has ever seen, but passed up the opportunity to sign other transfer targets. Michael Ballack, the former Bayern captain, recently warned the club they have to pay the big fees to compete with the Premier League and China, after the club balked at the valuations put on Kevin De Bruyne and Leroy Sané – players on their doorstep – by Wolfsburg and Schalke before their respective moves to Manchester City. Bayern lost Toni Kroos to Real Madrid over wage demands and they are reluctant to pay over the odds, a stance typified by Hoeness’s comments this month that accused Costa of “desperately” trying to get a pay rise. “That does not work with us,” Hoeness said.
Bayern, though, have a habitual, unerring self-confidence about them and Robert Lewandowski alone will send shivers down the spine of Laurent Koscielny and Shkodran Mustafi, the latter one of two Germans likely to start for Arsenal on Wednesday, with Mesut Özil sure to be included.
It is normal service for Bayern to be in pole position with spring fast approaching, with a fifth successive Bundesliga title virtually wrapped up. But the real litmus test for Ancelotti – as Guardiola can vouch – ultimately lies in the Champions League, and if the Italian can succeed where his predecessor failed, no more questions will be asked.
guardian
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