There were some question marks surrounding Kompany’s lineup selection from leg one vs. Inter Milan.
After Thomas Müller came on as a second half substitute for Bayern Munich in the first leg of the Champions League quarterfinals against Inter and scored an equalizer, it looked as if the Rekordmeister might just go on and score a winner before the final whistle, but that was not the case. Davide Frattesi’s 88th minute winner for Inter broke the Allianz Arena’s collective hearts after the greater majority of Bayern fans had been baying for Vincent Kompany to bring Müller on — especially in the wake of the news that this is, in fact, his last season with Bayern.
It’s still all to play for in the second leg in Milan, but Kompany is far from spoiled for choice with his personnel availability amidst Bayern’s injury crisis. All of Alphonso Davies, Hiroki Ito, Manuel Neuer, Jamal Musiala, and Kingsley Coman are currently out injured, and both Dayot Upamecano and Aleksandar Pavlović have only just resumed training after injury problems of their own. A tall task has been made even taller.
In Bayern’s press conference ahead of Der Klassiker against Dortmund in the Bundesliga, Kompany was asked about his lineup selection for the first leg against Inter. Much to the surprise of the majority of Bayern fans, the Belgian had made the decision to start Raphaël Guerreiro in the number 10 role instead of Müller and therefore slotting in Josip Stanišić at left back with Konrad Laimer on the opposite defensive flank.
When Kompany was asked about those lineup decisions, despite having an already thin squad at the moment, he explained that he always knew there were going to be question marks regardless of what decisions he may make. “It’s like that in every job. When you start somewhere, you always have to expect that there will be questions about your experience. The hunger is big, but you just have to get going and make decisions. So the question isn’t a problem for me. But the context of each game is important. Müller came in and scored the goal. You can always look at substitutions from both sides. You can say it was a good substitution by the coach – or it was a mistake that he didn’t start him,” he explained (via @iMiaSanMia).
Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images
In continuation, Kompany explained that, as the manager, he is always the one that should be expecting the brunt of the questions when the result does not go Bayern’s way — but that sentiment goes both ways if Bayern winds up getting a positive result. “A coach must always accept that people can say, ‘It’s good that he came on,’ or ‘Why didn’t he start?’” – You have to accept that when you lose. You cannot influence it. We have to keep our togetherness. We need every player. There were a lot of good things in this game. We didn’t win, but we didn’t lose yet,” he stressed.
In a world where punditry seems to be favoring pragmatism a bit more than boldness when the margin for error is razor thin, both sides of the coin can be examined with Kompany’s personnel decisions with an injury-ridden squad at such a crucial point in the season. He really did not have many options to start with in the first leg against Inter, but because he decided to leave Müller, a natural number 10, on the bench to start with Guerreiro in the central attacking role, the door was left wide open for criticism should things not go Bayern’s way, as they inevitably did not.
Looking for more thoughts and analysis of Bayern Munich’s upcoming showdown with Borussia Dortmund in Der Klassiker? Awesome, then check out the Bavarian Podcast Works — Preview Show on Patreon, Spotify, or below. We hit on the recent form of each team, the Champions League letdowns for each club, and take a guess at who might start for Bayern Munich, along with a prediction on the final score:
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