Until now, RB Leipzig under new head coach Martín Demichelis, have been up and down, but mostly encouraging. They’ve had 6-0 wins twice (against Eintracht Trier and Eintracht Frankfurt respectively), a 5-0 win over Hamburg, and a 3 – 0 win over Borussia Mönchengladbach.
But they’ve also come up short in big tests. They lost 2 – 0 away to Bayer Leverkusen, and then 4 – 1 away to Como in the Champions League. Today, they came up against one of the best teams in the world, Bayern Munich, and got picked
apart in torturous fashion.
Demichelis was initially hired by Leipzig to continue building on an identity they fundamentally associate themselves with: free flowing, vertical, and controlled football. He likes to play out of the back and have a lot of fluidity between the lines, often revolving his blueprint around a ‘free man’ who hovers unpredictably to evolve continuous offensive sequences.
None of that was apparent today, because they came up against the Vincent Kompany buzzsaw.
Bayern pinned Leipzig to a laughable degree. At half-time, Leipzig (on the right in the graphic below) barely had a touch in the opposing half, were outshot 14-0, and the entire half consisted of Bayern pressing Leipzig into turnovers:
The theme continued into the second half. Bayern continued to dominate, outshot Leipzig 29-12, and had eight big chances vs zero. Their xG (3.76), was blown away, but that’s something that’s going to happen frequently when you have studs like Michael Olise, Harry Kane, and Luis Diaz combining for 16 shots.
By the end of it, Diaz scored three goals and had an assist, Kane had two assists and a goal, while Olise scored once and assisted once — while terrorizing Leipzig’s left-wing. Joshua Kimmich was brilliant in midfield pulling strings.
What does this all mean for Real Madrid? It’s hard to say, because the playing styles of Real Madrid and Bayern Munich are vastly different. Firstly, Mourinho is much more conservative in nature than Kompany. Secondly, his scheme is much more rigid. There are less moving parts and deeper lines. Harry Kane, who was incredible in this game as a link-up machine — even dropping as far back as a center-back in the build-up to Bayern’s second goal — always had runners ahead of him. Bayern are also much cleaner under pressure and their line-breaking from the flanks is much more devastating.
On Wednesday, Leipzig will likely have far more of the ball than they did today, which is not necessarily a bad thing for Real Madrid, because the Germans are vulnerable defensively, especially when they push up the field. As always, it will come down to how efficient Vinicius Jr (by all accounts, likely to start that game given he’ll miss four matches in La Liga due to suspension) and Kylian Mbappe are in transition.
There is a lot of pressure on Leipzig to beat Real Madrid after today’s result. They have not done well in big games so far, and a loss to Real Madrid would put them in a really difficult spot given that they’ve already lost to Como and still have to play both Manchester City and Manchester United.
