Bayern were relentless and united against PSG – and have now won seven in a row

Bayern Munich’s 1-0 win over Paris Saint-Germain felt momentous. It wasn’t bombastic or overly dramatic. It did not have the overwhelming power that the Allianz Arena had experienced in the past.

And yet, with his quiet authority, competence and minimal excitement, this was everything for Bayern: a valuable step towards Champions League promotion, an encouraging victory over notable opponents and probably a new standard under Vincent Kompany.

This was their seventh win since the Barcelona debacle in October, when Kompany’s side were beaten 4-1 by an opponent capable of playing through them. Bayern looked chaotic and naive that night and when they left Spain coach Kompany was under more pressure than at any point this season.

He was never the first choice for this job. He was fifth or sixth in line at best, and everyone knows it. And because they do that, defeats like the one in Barcelona are particularly damaging. Instead of focusing on the qualities that attracted Bayern to Kompany, they are inviting the predatory media to think out loud about his time at Burnley and last season’s relegation from the Premier League.

But since that defeat, Bayern have won seven games in a row and kept seven clean sheets. Against PSG, Kompany’s team maintained that streak against a credible opponent with heavyweight credentials.

It is a victory that the Bayern coaching team will feel is deserved. They are generally happy with the progress this season – with the chances created, the goals scored and the unbeaten record in the Bundesliga. The defeat against Barcelona was the first complete disappointment and revealed significant weaknesses. While Kim Min-jae and Dayot Upamecano, the two central defenders, were ridiculed for their performances, the real culprit was poor pressing. Bayern played without the ball with enough enthusiasm but nowhere near the accuracy, and Barcelona were technically good enough to exploit this mistake.

That was different. PSG were never allowed to stay in possession of the ball for long and continuously. The Bavarians swarmed, suffocated and disrupted. Kingsley Coman and Leroy Sane started either side of Jamal Musiala in attacking midfield, cutting down their flanks and forcing the visitors’ centre-backs into long balls, sideways passes and turnovers which, had it not been for a few errant final passes and misunderstandings, would have ended can score more goals.

Bayern’s pressing was disciplined and organized. It was relentless but connected – in twos and threes rather than one-off, disjointed runs – and that was a testament to Kompany’s influence.

The younger players in particular enjoyed the attention to detail and educational nature of some training sessions – video analysis was also very popular – but this seemed to betray an investment by the entire team. Not just the docile members who have yet to win stacks of medals and need to make more money than they can ever spend, but also the veterans.

That’s important because those were the conversations in the summer – that was one of the fundamental doubts about Kompany. Sure, his playing career would give him some appeal among the impressive players – perhaps those who watched him captain Manchester City as a child – but what about the die-hard core that dominated the Bundesliga, won the Champions League and in some cases even boosted a World Cup?

(Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)

So far they seem to be just as approachable and receptive to the ideas. No, Bayern are still far from reaching their old peak. They are neither that talented nor that impressive. But they’re getting better and, more importantly, Kompany and his staff are showing their mastery of this group, evidenced by improvement in areas of their game that generally don’t take care of themselves.

Strikers score goals. Playmakers create chances. Goalkeeper parries. All of these things can happen outside of a fertile environment. But teams rarely become harder to beat and more difficult to play against if they are not well coached and a group of players does not believe in a common direction.

The individual performances are still a worthy subplot. Joshua Kimmich showed his best performance of the season against PSG. Often vilified as a recycler of possession rather than a true orchestrator, Kimmich was hugely influential, the artery connecting the defense and the midfield, the midfield and the attack. Leon Goretzka was also a force, playing with the familiar power and timing that – frankly, until a few weeks ago – seemed to be in his past forever. Coman is awakened, Sane and Serge Gnabry both start moving.

But perhaps the central defenders are the real beneficiaries of Kompany’s work. Kim scored the winning goal at the Allianz Arena and was awarded the Man of the Match award at the end of the game. Before that, however, in the seconds immediately after the final whistle, he, Upamecano and Manuel Neuer hugged each other on the goal line and celebrated their goal again. A well-deserved moment considering how much criticism this part of this team has had to endure.

Interestingly, however, little seems to have changed regarding the individual players. Their decision-making is slightly better – Upamecano and Kim timed their jumps from the defensive line particularly well on Tuesday – but their attributes and playstyles clearly haven’t been tempered.

The ugliest moments of this Barcelona defeat all seemed to involve one or both desperately chasing their own goal or getting caught up in a terrible mismatch against Lamine Yamal, Fermin Lopez or Raphinha. But often this was due to a structural failure further up the pitch and a chain reaction that resulted in a large valley of uncovered space.

PSG came to Munich with the players to create similar situations. That they never made it was partly due to Ousmane Dembélé’s red card in the second half, but also due to a Bayern team that seems less prone to substitutions, better at not committing too much to Losing the ball, and being more responsible in the way they attack. Everything they do, they do at a higher level than they did a few months ago.

This is a start. Bayern Munich has high standards and narrow victories are usually worth little before Christmas. In this case, however, Kompany and his players can be happy with the seventh win, the seventh game without conceding a goal and a small victory that should not be lost in the grand scheme of things.

(Top photo: Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)