Hansi Flick brought in new faces with Tuesday in mind but dropped points gave hope to RB Leipzig below
Hansi Flick’s biggest expression of frustration on Saturday afternoon was saved for five minutes from the end of normal time, when a dogged Union Berlin pilfered a hardly inevitable but not exactly undeserved equaliser at the home of the champions, as Marcus Ingvartsen’s scuffed effort rolled over the line. In tandem with RB Leipzig’s easy 4-1 win at Werder Bremen, it trimmed Bayern Munich’s lead at the top of the Bundesliga to five points – an inconvenience rather than a crisis – but the keenest suggestion from hearing Flick shout “Mann!” across the turf was less the effect of the goal itself and more that the coach had been holding it all in over the previous two hours.
The pressure had been building as the minutes ticked away – coming not from Union, or even really from the game itself, but from Bayern’s evolving situation, a rarely experienced, nagging doubt that had arguably begun before the Champions League quarter-final first leg with Paris Saint-Germain last Wednesday and continued to fester during and after the event. The reverse in the rerun of last year’s final was one thing and, despite the three away goals conceded, L’Equipe’s morning-after underlining that 95% of teams to have won 3-2 away in the first leg of a European tie since 1970 had gone on to progress had rarely seemed less relevant.
Related: European roundup: Bayern Munich held at home by Union Berlin
Arminia Bielefeld 1-0 Freibury; Bayern Munich 1-1 Union Berlin; Cologne 2-3 Mainz; Eintracht Frankfurt 4-3 Wolfsburg; Hertha Berlin 2-2 Borussia Mönchengladbach; Schalke 1-0 Augsburg; Stuttgart 2-3 Borussia Dortmund; Werder Bremen 1-4 RB Leipzig
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