FC BAYERN - KINGS OF EUROPE 2013/14

Puro wrote:What the hell is going on at Bayern? 

Robben: "there's no need to make football more complicated than what it is already"

Schweinsteiger: "I don't know what he has in store for me"

Pizarro: "I never had a manager who changes so many things"

Müller: "it seemed to me that everybody was playing a different position than the usual"

Ribéry: "The 4-1-4-1 is weird. It's a new system and completely different"

That's a lot of seasoned veterans not happy with Pep at Bayern.  

Kroos wrote:yeah exactly my thoughts, he is also hardworking, for dortmund he always run about 12 km


götze vs. the hungarian champion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxdUABE3r6o

you see his class, thats why he is no overhyped thiago, this dude is really top

blutgraetsche wrote:Wrote a month ago in this thread that I expect Bayern under Pep to struggle against well organised sides,  actually mentioned Freiburg even,  so the result tonight doesn't surprise me one bit. Bayern still lack balance and it will take some time for them to achieve it,  time they don't have.  Draws are the new defeats in the league and the knock-out competitions are going to kick off soon,  too.

Kroos control

As Bayern Munich prepare to visit Manchester City on Wednesday, Adam Bate looks at the vast potential of their midfielder Toni Kroos. The 23-year-old missed the Champions League final but is ready to make up for that disappointment by becoming the star man under Pep Guardiola...

It's hard to believe now but in October 2007, Bayern Munich, the current champions of Europe, were slumming it in what was then known as the UEFA Cup. What's worse, they were losing 2-1 to Crvena Zvezda in Belgrade courtesy of a bouncing 30 yard strike by Nenad Milijas. There were 10 minutes remaining and Bayern were hoping to somehow get out of Serbia with a draw. Ottmar Hitzfeld sent for Toni Kroos.

The youngster had made his professional debut the previous month - setting up two goals in a 5-0 thrashing of Energie Cottbus. But with the home crowd in full voice, this was rather different. And yet, Kroos immediately asserted himself as free-kick taker. Within minutes he had curled in a cross for Miroslav Klose to smuggle in an equaliser. In injury-time, from virtually the same spot, the midfielder whipped in a low ball that eluded everyone and nestled in the far corner.

The turnaround was complete and Kroos had undoubtedly been the instigator. Clearly, Bayern had got lucky but those who knew of their young star's gifts were reluctant to view the events as mere fortune. Hitzfeld was fulsome in his praise. "He is a passionate footballer with great instinct," said the veteran coach in his post-match interview. "He always takes the right decision on the pitch and you don't have to tell him what to do." Kroos was just 17 years old.

Potential

Six years on and the Germany international is still earning the admiration of his managers. "I have seen his unlimited potential," said Jupp Heynckes last season. "At the moment, I see Toni Kroos as further developed than Wolfgang Overath and Gunter Netzer at the same age." Given that Overath had played in his first World Cup final at 22 and both men can mount a persuasive case to be considered among the top five midfielders of their generation, these are not words to be dismissed cheaply. Heynckes is no Blade Runner, but as a two-time Champions League winning coach of pensionable age let's just say he's seen things.

But then, Toni Kroos inspires superlatives. Here is a player that has everything. "Kroos is a phenomenon," writes tactics expert Jonathan Wilson. "Perhaps the archetype of the modern attacking midfielder." That is to say he can shoot and pass, score and assist. He possesses an awareness of space and the intelligence to adapt to a variety of roles. He can play passes both long and short. He is technically comfortable in tight spaces and has the athleticism to drive forwards when afforded room.

Toni Kroos - Bundesliga 2012/13
Discipline Number Ranking
Shots per game 2.2 20th
Assists 11 11th
Passes 52.8 18th
Passing accuracy 89.7% 5th
Key passes per game 2.8 3rd
Accurate crosses per game 2.1 6th
Throughballs per game 0.5 3rd


The statistics tell some of the story. A passing accuracy of 89.7 per cent ranked him fifth in the Bundesliga last season. Impressive enough, but delve deeper and it becomes clear that the meticulousness of Kroos was rather more remarkable than those around him. He made 2.8 key passes per game - the third most in the league. The four more accurate passers didn't make as many key passes between them. He had 2.2 shots per game - among the top 20 in the league. The four more accurate passers didn't have as many shots between them.

There are the throughballs too. Kroos successfully threaded 11 passes behind the opponents' defensive line last season, putting him among the top three when it came to incision passing - but with a better accuracy than his rivals. This tale of key passes and throughball excellence paints a picture of a player not content to boost his statistical accuracy with safe balls to the full-back. Kroos plays the difficult passes. He just plays them with a precision others cannot match.

Not only is he making the difficult passes but he is able to make them in difficult areas of the pitch. Operating in the final third of the field in those confined spaces, Kroos flourishes. As a result, he is an ideal advanced playmaker. With Kroos injured in the spring, Thomas Muller scored five times in the knockout stages to take the plaudits in the latter stages of Bayern's triumphant Champions League campaign. But few in the Bayern dressing room are in any doubt as to who remains the main man. "It's better for me when Toni Kroos plays as a No. 10," said Franck Ribery. "He is also better in possession of the ball, he gives good passes. The No. 10, for me, is Toni Kroos." Franck by name, frank by nature.

Perhaps it is his unselfish play that makes him such a popular figure alongside FC Hollywood regulars such as Ribery and Arjen Robben. After all, his decision-making is arguably his greatest asset. The intangibles. That awareness of position, knowing where to find space at all times brings synergy benefits that Muller cannot match. Under Pep Guardiola there is even hope that Kroos could go to the next level - whatever that may be. "Toni Kroos is an exceptional player and he could play anywhere in the world," said Guardiola this summer.



The early signs are good. As the big guns fired off the opening shots of this season's Champions League - ingeniously branded as Matchday One - Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo were the predictable headline grabbers with three goals apiece. But somewhere in the classifieds was Kroos. The man with more passes (66) than anyone else in the opposition half and with a superior level of accuracy too - 98.5 per cent, the best of any player to find a team-mate more than 20 times. His barely believable passing accuracy of 96.7 per cent in the final third against CSKA Moscow was also unrivalled.

As Manchester City prepare to host Bayern Munich at the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday evening, even Sheikh Mansour might be looking on enviously at the away team's midfield options. Muller, Robben and Ribery will be there. Bastian Schweinsteiger too. The heroes of Wembley. But the best talent on view will be a player who wasn't even on the field that day in May. The guy who always made the right decision on the pitch at 17 is ready to take on the world at 23.

Kroos wrote:nice one, and KROOS CONTROL lived up the hype, as he did in the last 2 years

its fair to say that from the top 5 cm`s in the world, 3 are german  

Kroos wrote:its fair to say that from the top 5 cm`s in the world, 3 are german  

blutgraetsche wrote:This stats hysteria is going overboard anyway.  I blame American sports where this huge obsession with stats comes from.  The beauty of football is that statistics can never tell the whole story.

Brilliance is all in a night's work for Bayern Munich's perfectionists

Pep Guardiola's men refused to reach for the superlatives even after a night when they turned Manchester City into also-rans

"I'm very, very satisfied," said the Bayern Munich president before leaving the Etihad, beaming with pride. Uli Hoeness, who is widely credited with inventing the low-key, after-match statement in Germany – he has routinely criticised his team after wins and praised them after disappointing results over the course of 30 years – was only briefly able to resist the superlatives on Wednesday night.

Was it a demonstration of Bayern's might, someone inquired. "These kind of political, militaristic words have no place in football," replied Hoeness, 61, in the stadium's mixed zone, a corridor crammed with players' wives and buggies, reporters, and the odd bad-tempered cook. "We have a very good team and a very good coach. They work together very well, and that's what follows from that."

He could not play down Bayern's result and performance for long, though. "For 80 minutes this was a football that I have rarely seen in my life, against a team of the same standard," he said. "It was amazing how we passed the ball around."

He was no longer "surprised" by his team, Hoeness added, but their showing away to one of Europe's better sides had been "incredible" – 10 shaky minutes at the end after Alvaro Negredo's goal and Jérôme Boateng's red card aside. "It would have been [crazy] if we had drawn this game, we should have been five or six up by that time," he said.

Pep Guardiola, the mastermind of this "lesson in football" (Der Spiegel), was less enthralled. "There's a lot to improve," said the 42-year-old. "Our dead-ball situations were terrible." Few others had noticed.

Later that night, Guardiola cut a more relaxed figure at the Bayern banquet at The Lowry hotel. The Spaniard had passed the first big international test of his reign with flying colours. Attempts to stoke up more controversy about a possible difference of opinion between his captain Philipp Lahm and the sporting director Matthias Sammer – the latter had criticised Bayern's "emotionless" performance against Hannover (2-0) in the league three weeks ago – appeared somewhat desperate in the light of "City's dismantling" (Abendzeitung). That topic, if it ever was one, is now over. At half past midnight, Lahm and Sammer embraced.

The chairman of the board, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, praised a "classy" performance. "We're all spoilt from last season, but this was a feast for the eyes." The fears that had crept in during the summer about Pep's revolution being too brutal and swift have given way to hope that the new manager might make Bayern play even better. "If you continue like that, I'm convinced we'll have one or two other things apart from wine on the table come the end of the season," Rummenigge said.

It's hard to tell whether Guardiola has subtly toned down his tactical ideas to make them fit reality more closely – he recently described the Bundesliga as "counter-attacking country", where preventing quick transitions is "the most important thing" – or if the team are just better able to implement his complex combination of smart positioning and manic pressing. Hoeness was reluctant to divulge too many details.

Just like their perfectionist coach, the Bayern players did not seem all that impressed with their performance. "We played quite well," said Thomas Müller. "We know that we can play a lot better still," mused Manuel Neuer. The keeper warned that it was "important not to fall prey to arrogance when you keep the ball for three minutes and the crowd are shouting Olé! That's when you make mistakes, and get punished. We saw that tonight."

The one thing this team get excited about is their own ultra-professional unexcitability. Lahm was the only player who looked rather delirious as he sat at his table, staring into space. He had needed four beers to help him provide a doping sample.