Injuries pile up at Bayern Munich to threaten Thomas Müller's perfect ending

The Guardian

07-04-2025

As Didier Drogba's penalty swept into the corner of the net, everything stopped. It had been written that it was Bayern Munich's night. After having their chances in the 2010 Champions League final but ending up as a footnote in Inter's treble, this was where they would put it right.
They could have done little more, piling the pressure on a prone and wounded Chelsea. But they, and Drogba in particular, would just not fold – and the striker's winning kick in the shootout made all their worst fears come true. Bayern's party was over. The public transport network, taking the majority of fans back from Fröttmaning to the centre of Munich, ground to an involuntary halt, as if signifying all elements human and digital were unable to digest what had come to pass.
Even before that it should have been Thomas Müller's night, with his late opener dethroned from winning goal status by (of course) Drogba's even later headed equaliser, aeons before he and they arrived at the trauma of penalties. In another context, at another time, Müller's Saturday morning announcement that he will leave Bayern at the end of the season would have seemed like the call to make the stars align as the 13th anniversary of 19 May 2012 prepares to be marked and another Allianz Arena final comes into view. It would be his perfect ending, winning the Champions League with his club, in his arena, before taking that familiar saunter off into the sunset after 25 years.
Yet fate, it appears, may have different ideas. Bayern overcame degrees of difficulty just down the road at Augsburg on Friday night to retain their advantage in the Bundesliga title race with a few moments of fortune. Coming from a goal down, they were second-half beneficiaries of Cédric Zesiger's contestable second yellow card and Harry Kane giving them the lead almost straight away from the resulting set-piece. Mergim Berisha had the opportunity to score a 90th minute equaliser for the 10-man hosts but got the ball stuck under his feet. Leroy Sané's shot, deflected in by Chrislain Matsima, sealed the win but if they had endured a close scrape, it certainly didn't feel as if they had seen much luck.
If anybody in the Bayern camp had thought the injury situation couldn't get any worse they were so, so wrong. Jamal Musiala had hauled Bayern out of difficulty at the end of the first half, equalising with the sort of goal that only he can score. Refusing to be outmuscled by a cluster of Augsburg defenders, he held on to the ball and guided a shot into the right-hand corner of Finn Dahmen's net. Typical Musiala. Whatever the odds, he has a solution. Until he went down, in the seventh minute of the second half. The game carried on around Musiala as he sat on the turf, Sané crossing over for Michael Olise to rattle a shot against the post, as if trying to ignore the moment that could shape Bayern's season.
Musiala's race was run. 'We don't know how bad it is yet,' Vincent Kompany told DAZN, but he must have known from the way his player stopped and held the back of his thigh. The diagnosis followed quickly after, with a torn hamstring confirmed and Bayern's chances against the club that vanquished them in Madrid in 2010, already diminished by the injuries to defenders including Alphonso Davies and Dayot Upamecano, greatly reduced. Inter might have been slight favourites; the balance has come down heavily on their side in the last 10 days.
The romantic in you wants to believe that this is all setting the stage for a Müller rescue act as he replaces Musiala in the XI, an idea given extra poignancy by Saturday's news. An initial thought that there might be some discord – his acknowledgment that the end of his time playing with Bayern 'did not reflect my personal wishes' came out 41 minutes before the club's confirmation – was quickly quashed with typical Müller humour, in a photo of him flanked by Jan-Christian Dreesen, Christoph Freund and Max Eberl posing with a 'July 2025' jersey, a nod to him staying on for the Club World Cup.
It would be something special if one of the great unsung heroes of the Champions League could lead his team back to the grand finale at home – his home. Yet, ironically for one so reluctant to take centre stage, Müller probably lacks the right supporting cast to lift him all the way to glory.
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Augsburg 1-3 Bayern, Werder Bremen 2-0 Eintracht Frankfurt, Freiburg 1-4 Dortmund, Heidenheim 0-1 Leverkusen, Mainz 1-1 Holstein Kiel, RB Leipzig 3-1 Hoffenheim, Vfl Bochum 0-4 Stuttgart, Union Berlin 1-0 Wolfsburg, St Pauli 1-1 Mönchengladbach
It would have been typical of this title race so far had Leverkusen let Bayern get away again by failing to win on Saturday afternoon at Heidenheim, and they were mightily close to doing so. Emi Buendia's first Bundesliga goal, a deft finish in the first minute of stoppage time, saved Werkself blushes after a second successive well-below-par performance, after the shock DFB Pokal semi-final elimination at third-tier Arminia Bielefeld, with the winner bringing the champions back to six points behind Bayern. The Aston Villa loanee was assisted by Jonas Hofmann, another player getting meagre minutes at the moment. 'When you come in for just seven or eight minutes and make the difference like those two,' argued Granit Xhaka, 'it shows the mentality and how strong our dressing room is.'
The other unsuccessful Pokal semi-finalists were Leipzig, after an improved away performance under Zsolt Löw which yielded a clutch of chances nevertheless ended in defeat at Stuttgart. Löw's first Bundesliga game at the helm was more successful as his charges were the eventual beneficiaries of an error-strewn game with struggling Hoffenheim, in which they were gifted a pair of first-half goals after going a goal down before the visitors had Leo Østigård sent off. The home support also showed their affection for the sacked Marco Rose – 'Danke Fuer Alles Marco' said one large banner – and Yussuf Poulsen's late goal to seal the win means they are just a point shy of the top four.
The league's more season-long crisis club, remarkably, are still in with a shout of Champions League (or at least European) football. Dortmund's 4-1 win at their perennial rabbits Freiburg was a second straight victory – and second successive competent performance – against a rival for the Euro spots. Carney Chukwuemeka, making his first start after a series of nagging injuries, scored and was influential throughout before being replaced by the returning Felix Nmecha. 'Carney is a great footballer who obviously has some catching up to do,' said Niko Kovac, whose team appears to be listening to him at last. 'He showed what he's capable of today.'
That win puts BVB just five points behind the team they vanquished last week, fourth-placed Mainz, who were held at home by bottom club Holstein Kiel, who made it crystal clear that they haven't thrown in the towel yet. Elsewhere in face-offs between European chasers and relegation battlers Dapo Afolayan's brilliant equaliser from range gave St Pauli a deserved point against resurgent Borussia Mönchengladbach and Ermedin Demirovic scored a hat-trick as Stuttgart got back on the Bundesliga rails after reaching their first Pokal final in 12 years, winning 4-0 at Bochum. Eintracht Frankfurt, meanwhile, reminded us that third place is as much up for grabs as fourth by slumping to a 2-0 defeat at Werder Bremen ahead of their Europa League quarter-final visit to Tottenham.