The Sync: Bayern 1–1 Lyon

Blue days at the Allianz

Bate and Bay­ern had the same idea in the sec­ond halves of their respec­tive matches. Hold on for a home draw. How­ever unlike Bate, Bay­ern Munich hap­pened to be one of the 10 rich­est clubs in the world. Lyon vis­ited the Allianz tonight and scraped by with a 1–1 draw against FC Bay­ern thanks in part to an own goal by DiMiche­lis; how­ever, it more so due to a star­tling lack of imme­di­acy on the part of Jur­gen Klinsmann.

Bay­ern lev­eled in the 52’ when Oddo threaded a ball to Klose at the edge of the box, which the Ger­man inter­na­tional took to the by line and let fly across goal. Toni made a superb run than sucked in two defend­ers, leav­ing plenty of space for the ghost­ing Ze Roberto to run into and head the ball in for the equal­izer. Things looked on the up for under fire trainer.

Oddly, after that, Bay­ern seemed con­tent to sit on the point for cer­tain, while hop­ing for a gift in two more. They com­pletely dom­i­nated pos­ses­sion through­out the match. They had a sig­nif­i­cant advan­tage in shots, cor­ners and free kicks, but as they vis­i­bly tired, there was no cav­alry for the res­cue and thus no win.

What they lacked was change.

Rat­ings for FC Bay­ern
Toni: 5.5 – Maybe its bad luck, but he’s just miss­ing too many chances.
Klose:8 – Ener­getic through­out and cre­ated many oppor­tu­ni­ties.
Ribery:6.5 – Lively, but forced to the fringes by Toulalan. Vis­i­bly tired early in the sec­ond half.
Scweinsteiger:5 — Much like Ribery was forced out of the game but even on the wings he pro­vided lit­tle.
Ze Roberto:9 — The sug­ges­tion that he has lost his legs is absurd. Cov­ered more ground than any­one and scored the equal­izer.
Demichelis:8.5 — Mark Van Bom­mel just lost a job. Didn’t put a foot wrong as DM. Unfor­tu­nately did put his head wrong once.
Lahm:7 — Solid com­ing for­ward and I think I saw him defend once or twice.
Oddo:4.5 — Cross­ing was rub­bish to the point of being com­i­cal. Ran his socks off but was done late.
Lucio:6 — Hard to judge as Lyon weren’t attack­ing. But didn’t do any­thing wrong.
Breno:6 — See above
Riensing:6.5 — Lit­tle to do, but after recent events, doing his job when called upon is a good thing for the young keeper.
Borowski: N/A — And we will get to this

Either/Or
It’s really this sim­ple. Klose works well with Podol­ski. Toni works well on his own with Ribery work­ing behind him. Mix­ing and match­ing out­side of those para­me­ters becomes a for­mula for frus­tra­tion. So either go with the 4–2-3–1 with Toni hold­ing as I keep harp­ing upon; or, bench Toni and play two com­ple­men­tary for­wards. It ain’t rocket science.

Out of Ideas?
Borowski was the only sub made by Klins­mann and it was in the 83′. Do you know what an 83′ sub­sti­tu­tion is called? Time-wasting!

There was quite sim­ply no plan B. He played a strong lineup. I liked the very Span­ish 4–4-2 he employed. It gave Bay­ern pos­ses­sion and chances. But this is a team lack­ing con­fi­dence. So some of those chances were squan­dered. So rather than see­ing that his oppo­nent was play­ing a very con­ser­v­a­tive counter-attacking sys­tem which clogged the mid­dle, he left well enough alone. He passed on a chance to shake things up to help them get the boost of confidence.

Ze Roberto and Demiche­lis both per­formed excel­lently tonight. But one would have suf­ficed. Klins­mann didn’t need a dou­ble pivot when he wasn’t fac­ing an attack. The obvi­ous thing to do is sac­ri­fice one for an attacker: Borowski, Sosa or Podol­ski. With three in attack, Toulalan can’t focus on Ribery and Mak­oun can’t focus on Schwe­in­steiger. The new vari­able forces change to the orga­ni­za­tion of Lyon and frees some­one to get the ball down the cen­ter chan­nel. This should have been done at the half.

Also Ribery is just return­ing from a long lay-off. Oddo has just joined the team. Both of these play­ers faded mid­way through the sec­ond half. Rather than putting on fresh legs to run at the defense minded French, Klins­mann did noth­ing and their input into the game dete­ri­o­rated as his chances at full points went down the drain.

Tac­tics isn’t change for change sake. It’s rec­og­niz­ing the oppo­si­tion and respond­ing. Klins­mann failed on this mea­sure tonight.

Jer­mey Toulalan
What an amaz­ing game this guy had. He would not allow Ribery to roam. He closed down the left chan­nel inwards and forced Ribery to the periph­ery. It should be some­thing Bun­desliga train­ers take note of. How­ever, Toulalan is also one of the classi­est defen­sive mids around, so don’t expect all clubs to repli­cate his per­for­mance. Also he plays the sim­ple pass, which is nice. Bayer 04 should take note. Toulalan was eas­ily man of the match over both DiMiche­lis and Ze Roberto.

Lyon’s Tac­tics
Here was Claude Puel’s talk with the team before the game.

“Try to get fouled about 50 yards from goal. We will use Juninho’s set piece abil­ity to dev­as­tate them.”

Well at least that’s how it played out. Juninho’s free-kicks were the only offense Lyon attempted other than a cou­ple of coun­ters where they lit­er­ally didn’t know what to do once they had bro­ken behind Bayern’s defense.

Play­ing for an away draw is com­mon, but this was so cyn­i­cal that even Ranger’s Wal­ter Smith called it insipid. But it worked because of a lucky bounce and the fact that Klins­mann refused to react.

Apolo­gies
I’m not a fan of Lucio, but he had a strong game tonight. Lit­tle to do, but more than capa­ble when needed. He lim­ited his runs and thus didn’t leave Breno stranded. Three or four times a year, I have to do this. But before long he will return to the center-back who wanted to be Pele and things will go sour.

Tagged as: Franck Ribery, Jeremy Toulalan, Jürgen Klinsmann, Luca Toni, Lucio, Miroslav Klose