Lethal Lewandowski helps Bayern to high five
▶ Munich’s thrashing of Fortuna Dusseldorf opens up a 10-point gap at the top of the Bundelsiga
Ten points clear, 10 wins on the trot. Bayern Munich need only another three victories now from their remaining five fixtures to guarantee their 30th Bundesliga title.
They waltzed past relegation-threatened Fortuna Dusseldorf yesterday, building effortlessly on the crucial win in midweek against their title rivals Borussia Dortmund.
Robert Lewandowksi scored the 42nd and 43rd goals of his prolific season, the first of them a marvellous team goal that will have been admired far and wide. That was Bayern’s third, and once they had gone 5-0 up with more than half an hour left, Dusseldorf were fearing utter humiliation. Bayern might have added more, but preserved their energies.
It was the night that European football was supposed to have staged its grand showpiece, the Champions League final.
It is not fanciful to imagine that, had the calendar not been reshaped by the pandemic, we might have been watching Bayern, who are 3-0 up halfway through their last-16 tie against Chelsea, in Istanbul yesterday.
They are playing like a European superpower again, and in the sort of form that even the likes of Liverpool or Paris Saint-Germain would envy: In 2020, their record across competitions reads played 15, won 14, drawn one.
Dusseldorf had them at arm’s length for a quarter of an hour, but manager Uwe Rosler, the former Manchester City striker, has been around long enough to read the signs. His players could barely catch breath, and once Bayern had their first breakthrough, they threatened a cascade of goals.
Benjamin Pavard, nominally the right back, was up in the Dusseldorf penalty area to meet a cross. He swept in a shot, slightly off balance, after a floated diagonal ball by the excellent Thomas Muller had been volleyed by Serge Gnabry.
At which point the Bundesliga title-holders had some luck. Matthias Jorgenson deflected Pavard’s rather miscued effort into his own goal.
From Joshua Kimmich’s corner, Pavard timed his leap better than his markers and registered his second goal in a fortnight from a set-piece, his fifth of the campaign.
Dusseldorf interrupted the procession briefly when Kenan Karaman, a striker starved of service, saw his shot blocked by Alphonso Davies. The teenaged left-back had anticipated wisely, and, just as in the 1-0 over Dortmund, had preserved Bayern’s command with a key defensive intervention.
Bayern’s third was a wonderful collective construction, initiated by David Alaba, the centre half, with a precise pass to Lewandowski. A subtle flick from the centre forward, who had picked Kimmich accelerating from central midfield, saw Kimmich cut the ball back to Muller, who set up Lewandowski’s 28th Bundesliga goal of the season.
No 29 followed within five minutes of the second half, the provider Gnabry, and the finish, via a backheel and through Florian Kastenmeier’s legs, the mark of a forward at the peak of his powers.
Lewandowksi had picked up a satisfying new landmark, too. These were his first goals against Dusseldorf: He has now scored against all 18 clubs in the German top flight during his career.
Davies scored Bayern’s fifth almost immediately, after an understated hopscotch through three half-hearted Dusseldorf challenges. Muller probably ought to have added the sixth just after the hour, arrowing a volley over Kastenmeier’s crossbar.
By then Dusseldorf were longing for the final whistle. At 16th in the table, they are just above the automatic relegation places, but Werder Bremen, 17th, yesterday closed the gap to two points and have a match in hand. Rosler, only appointed in January, has a tough rescue mission ahead of him.