On Saturday, Thomas Tuchel’s drastically altered Bayern Munich lineup easily defeated Wolfsburg at home, winning 2-0 to move ahead of Stuttgart into second place. Harry Kane, the captain of England, was ruled out due to back problems and missed his first league game of the season. Tuchel made eight changes to the team that was ousted from the Champions League with a 2-1 loss at Real Madrid on Wednesday.
With just one game left to go, Kane, who has scored 36 goals in the league this season, will have one chance to tie Robert Lewandowski’s all-time record of 41 goals if the England captain returns the following week. Manuel Neuer, the captain of Bayern, was pleased with his team’s response to the disappointing and contentious loss to Real. Neuer said to DAZN, “We were in control for over 90 minutes and got into the game well, it was key.” “Today we had to overlook real, which was difficult to cope with, but we did a decent job of that.”
Just four minutes into his debut, 19-year-old Croatian midfielder Lovro Zvonarek scored, marking his first start; ten minutes later, Thomas Mueller set up Leon Goretzka for a second goal. With one game left, Bayern, who lost the Bundesliga crown to Bayer Leverkusen under Xabi Alonso in April, now sit two points ahead of Stuttgart in second place. Leverkusen, who are still undefeated, can move closer to being the first team in Bundesliga history to play an entire season without losing if they win this Sunday’s late game against Bochum.
Leverkusen has two more league games left to complete their current 49-game winning streak. Four minutes after Goretzka’s goal, Spain’s Bryan Zaragoza, who was also starting for Bayern in the league for the first time, turned in a Mueller pass and appeared to have scored the home team’s third goal. But, VAR flagged Mueller offside throughout the build-up, chalking off the goal. In the closing moments of the game, Bayern, who will end the season without a title for the first time since 2012, progressively lessened the intensity of the contest and gave more debuts.
The adolescents Matteo Perez Vinlof and Jonathan Asp-Jensen, as well as Bayern captain Manuel Neuer, who was playing in his 500th Bundesliga game, were replaced by Israel goalkeeper Daniel Peretz late in the second half. According to Neuer, the alteration was prearranged, and he was unharmed. “Daniel deserves to play; he is given the team so much and displayed good performances.”
After 27 games, Ralph Hasenhuttl’s Wolfsburg have not triumphed in the Bavarian capital due to this loss.Hoffenheim improved their hopes of making it to Europe earlier on Sunday when they defeated Darmstadt, who had already been demoted, 6-0.Ilhas Bebou and Maximilian Beier both scored two goals, while Pavel Kaderabek and Ozan Kabak, a former center back for Liverpool, also added goals against the club in last position.
