R.I.P. Junior Malanda: Fur immer im unseren Herzen.
VfL Wolfsburg 4 - 1 FC Bayern München
Fussball ist back! The first game of the Rückrunde pitted 2nd against 1st. Luckily for me, I am too sick (read: a bit sick) to hang out with real people this week, so I got to watch this clash instead.
2": Vierinha almost chips Benaglio from a metre away. They both play for the same team, so that would have been embarrassing.
3": Dr Caligiuri finds De Bruyne as the car manufacturers break away. Former Chelsea playmaker Kev shifts the ball to Bas Dost very quickly. Bas Dost is just outside of not-world-footballer-of-the-year Manuel Neuer's goal, and sweeps it into that goal's bottom left hand corner. And makes it 1-0 to not-the-best-team-in-the-world (because that's Bayern) Wolfsburg.
Bayern then proceeded to spend 10 minutes cockily wasting free kicks (Schweinsteiger) and allowing the ball to run away from them (Robben).
Luckily for Bayern, Wolfsburg had decided to match them in the cockiness stakes, by sending Ivica Olic back to Hamburg, reportedly because he wants to spend more time with his grandson Ivan Klasnic. Oh, and also because Hamburg are attempting to break the Bundesliga's goalscoring record this season. That's the 'slowest team to score 10 goals in a season' record, by the way.
Kev continued to terrorise replacement right-back Sebastian Rode; on the other side, Dr Caligiuri made it look as if Ribery wasn't playing at all, such was his energy (which worked in combination with the fact that Ribery is out injured).
David Alabama (thanks autocorrect) could have packed a bit more blam! into his 28th minute shot. He had an entire epoch in which to prepare his strike, as it sat and waited in his path as he sprinted towards the middle of the D, but it still was fairly straightforward for Benaglio to gather.
Benaglio's distribution was a key part of Wolfsburg's first half play. He basically spilt the ball to his nearest team mate before you could retweet Wiley's joke about A$AP Ricky being funnier than A$AP Rocky. The Wolves then tried to play the ball out to their wingers, moving up the pitch as a unit as they did so, trying to prevent themselves from becoming too stretched out in the process. When they lost the ball, the entire green team would then retreat into their own half, and sit deep until Bayern misplaced a pass. And Bayern were misplacing a lot of passes, by their standards. Naldo had Lewandowski in a hidden pocket somewhere.
5 minutes before half time, and a curling, floated pass from Dr Caligiuri on the right put Das Boss in again. Unfortunately, Neuer was rushing out in an off-putting manner, so the first-time shot went wide.
Then there were some handbags, and then there was an amazing second goal from Bas Dost. At the end of a minute of stoppage time, a free kick was headed out of the Bayern area, and Das Boss lashed a half-volley to Neuer's left once again, this time hitting it a lot higher, faster, and off the post for good measure.
Bas Dost exited the field laughing, and came back on laughing too. Fair enough - he'd just doubled his goal tally for the season.
Bayern threw on Mitchell Weiser for Seb Rode. Did it make a difference? Well, Kev was put through by Max Arnold after 52 minutes, and slotted low to Neuer's right after running from his own half to the edge of the Bayern box. So, maybe. Drei zu null!
About a minute later, Bernat did exactly what traditional power structures needed him to do, and ran with the ball into the Wolves' box. Where Naldo intercepted the ball. And kindly passed it right back to him, just as Benaglio was about to land on it. And he tapped the ball into the net. And it was 3:1.
Wolfsburg then very nearly restored their three goal advantage, with a back-post header from Dost finding Arnold, who had close Bayern attention, but who nonetheless should have done something better than smash the ball over the goal. Something like scoring in the goal, for instance.
It was just before the hour mark that Bayern finally stepped up the pace, and camped out just outside Wolfsburg's box. Their passing and movement seemed a lot less clever than usual. I don't know where they'd had their winter conditioning camp, but a lot of Bayern's players looked like they were in different time zones. The Weltmeisters were hapless; the car manufacturers created goalscoring opportunities every time they ventured forward. Wolfsburg weren't penned in, so much as they were sitting deep and picking FCB off on the break.
With 20 minutes left, Götze and Pizarro replaced Müller and Lewandowski, immediately before Robben struck a fierce free kick right at the middle of Benaglio's goal. After Naldo had tripped Lewandowski in an area that you shouldn't really trip people up in. It was tipped over.
Another Wolfsburg attack, and Kev was running away from Dante. The ball bounced in such a way that Kev had to slow down, and do a little shimmy dance. It looked like Dante might be able to cover. There was only a little gap to Neuer's right. Kev slammed it in there. 4-1, 20 minutes left.
After 83 minutes, Wolfsburg were confident enough in the result to bring on Nicklas Bendtner. Who wears the number 3 shirt. This was almost immediately followed by Claudio Pizarro scoring, but he slid in to send a cross from the left way over from all of two metres out, despite the open goal being at his mercy. Arjen Robben had a go at running at the Wolfsburg defence after that, but it was a bit late, and the likes of Luis Gustavo and Diego Benaglio were in exceptionally defiant moods.
It finished 4-1, unless I'm hallucinating, but I don't think I am. Kev De Bruyne was world class - and can look forward to being joined by Andre Schürrle in the very near future. The gap to Die Bayern remains huge, at 8 points, but Wolfsburg will at least be confident of finishing ahead of the rest of the chasing pack after an excellent victory.
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