League Cup: VfB Stuttgart 0 – 2 Bayern Munich

Bayern Munich continue to play attractive football and they continue to play against under strength opposition.

The team Stuttgart fielded consisted of probably five starting XI regulars. Some players like the newly acquired ex-Zaragoza striker Ewerthon or Gold Cup heroes Ricardo Osorio and Pavel Pardo aren’t match fit yet, just like many others, who had to deal with or are dealing with smaller injuries, like Mario Gomez and Thomas Hitzlsperger – the list goes on. To some extent the situation was worse than Bremen’s, even if the scoreline doesn’t reflect this very well. As Bayern coach Ottmar Hitzfeld analysed it had to do with Stuttgart’s overall more defensive approach. It also had to do with the fact that Bayern had a bit of an injury problem themselves. All four strikers weren’t able to play, as Miroslav Klose caught a summer flu. So it was up to 19 year old Sandro Wagner, who had previously only played in Bayern’s third division team, to fill the gap. He scored the second goal, and thus he did reasonably well, but he often appeared disconnected from the rest of Bayern’s play and he simply isn’t yet up to par with the likes of Klose, Toni or Podolski.

Now that I made enough excuses for Stuttgart fans and for myself, who fears total dominance of this squad, here comes the good bit: I’m more and more looking forward to see them play in the league and with Franck Ribery, who also scored the first goal, Bayern might have their own Diego or Rafael van der Vaart. While I expect Bremen and Stuttgart to present themselves in a better shape in the Bundesliga, there are enough lower quality teams that Munich can brush away with style. So it’s no longer Werder Bremen’s lone task to produce the 6-0 scorelines.

This sets up an interesting final between Schalke 04 and Bayern Munich in Leipzig on Saturday. It looks like Schalke will be able to play at full strength, with both Rafinha and Bordon returning to the squad. On the other hand Bayern seems to be having some troubles now. It’s not clear whether Klose can recover from his flu in time, Ribery is dealing with a minor knee injury from the Stuttgart match, Scweinsteiger has a cold and Mark van Bommel could be suspended following unsporting behaviour in the semis. That’s a bit much, even for Bayern Munich standards.

I just discovered, that the official Bundesliga site offers streams with match highlights of the League Cup. So far they are only available on the German pages and the commentary is in German too, so I don’t know whether they are region restricted in any way. But you can try if they work here: Low Bandwidth – High Bandwidth

As a backup here is another slightly less legal way to watch the highlights:

0-1 Franck Ribery (8th min.)
0-2 Sandro Wagner (66th min.)

Some Related Bundesliga Posts:

Category: Bundesliga