Match Day Thread: FC Bayern vs. VfL Bochum (UPDATED – 2-1 to Bayern, w/video)

By: phil | December 20th, 2011

Match kicks off in less than 1 hour from North Rhine-Westphalia. I’m trying to paste a live chat widget into this page – let me know if it works.

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Bayern pulls it out thanks to a late goal from Robben. A pretty poor first half, in my opinion, which included both some offensive stagnation and a few glaring mistakes on defense.

This should have all 3 goals, with slow-motion replays on each:

Some thoughts:

- Bochum’s goal was a classic Brasilian tactic – a low cross from deep on one side, an offensive guy crashing through the middle as a decoy, and another offensive guy sneaking in the back to clean up the ball after the defenders follow the first guy. Bayern has to be sharper about man-marking when they get inside the area. At the same time, a good play by Bochum – really, the problem comes before the finish. If your opponent has a guy on the wing with a free window to cross and two guys crashing the goal, you’ve already failed.

- Nice goal by Kroos, and also a nice pass by Gomez. He’s not known as a great assist man, but that was a good look – he could have easily have blasted a shot there. But he waited for a split second until the defense shifted to the middle and Kroos found the open space.

- Once everyone is back, we have a real conundrum as far as who to play up top – Gomez, Muller, Kroos, Ribery, and Robben for 4 spots. Rotation is good and all, but for the biggest, games, one of those 5 will have to hit the bench (unless we work Bastian and Kroos in the two CM spots, which might leave us short of tackling power).

So, despite a slow start, we go into the winter break on a high note – in first place in the 1. Bundesliga, still alive in the Pokal and Champions League, and everyone hopefully to come back healthy in 2012. I’m going to keep posting all winter long, whether it’s photo and video break-downs, analyzing transfer rumors, looking into the weird threats to kick Basel from the Champions League, or anything else that comes up. E-mail me at bayern.offside@yahoo.com if you want to see anything particular discussed.

Also, for some reason I just wrote “analysing” and the program noted it as an error and suggested “analyzing.” This is getting heavy. I’m into the deep end now. If I end up getting thrown out of my country, one of you guys has to let me stay with you. Thanks for reading.