Three weeks ago in London, Arsenal beat Bayern Munich 2-0 in the Champions League. This is not a particularly inventive sentence to start an Internet post, but it should be an attention-grabber nonetheless. Bayern Munich took this personally for some reason - “oh, so, a win against us on a Tuesday night constitutes a famous win?” - and got angry and took out their anger on the poor Gunners when Arsenal visited for the return leg. They bagged three before the half. They got five in total. Let this be a lesson to any other European clubs who decide they want to beat Bayern and actually manage to do it, as Arsenal did a few weeks ago: Don’t. Just don’t. It will only bring pain. Bayern are the greatest team in the world.
Robert Lewandowski started the scoring by beating an offside trap and redirecting a header past Petr Cech. It’s his 20th goal - twenty! already! - in just 16 games. This prompted Martin Tyler to compare him to German legend Gerd Müller - “someday we will talk about Lewandowski that way” - and for a second I scoffed but then I realized that it might be a fair comparison when all is said and done and the big Pole is done scoring. Which, uh, someone let me know when that happens. Doesn’t seem likely anytime soon.
Lewandowski has been on fire this year. Photo: @BavarianFBWorks | Twitter
Then Thomas Müller did what he does to make it 2-0, and then Arsenal realized they were in Bayern’s trance and got scared and started to fall back and back and back and then, just before halftime, and left-back (!!) David Alaba did this:
Wooooof.
In that first half of their fun-run, Bayern proved what we already knew: They’re just better than Arsenal, and they’re probably better than anyone else in the world, too. They obliterated a team that seems to be a real contender for the title in the Premier League, the world’s third-best league - that’s not a hot take - but I loved the way they decided to beat Arsenal. They were daring Alexis Sanchez and Olivier Giroud and the rest of them to score on counter attacks. They played so high, so aggressively, and Bayern weren’t too terribly worried about busting ass to get back. Bayern were just certain that Arsenal wouldn’t dare score on them. It was like they were staring at Arsenal, hypnotizing them, calmly saying phrases like “you’re not going to score on us, right?” And Arsenal blankly stared back and muttered “yes, master, yes of course, you are right.”
Bayern started the world’s-best-domestic-league season with 10 straight wins. They might get 20 more. They might not lose in the Bundesliga, and if I had to, I’d bet on them not losing another game the Champions League either.
Grant Burkhardt is on Twitter @grantburkhardt and you can email him about the footie at burkhardt@the18.com
