Created on 22-10-2009 at 00:00 AM
The team hotel was located on Bordeaux's Place de la Comédie, but there were no jokes in Karl-Heinz Rummenigge's script when he stood up at five to midnight to address the post-match banquet. The chairman spoke of a “deserved defeat” in Wednesday’s Champions League Group A fixture away to Girondins Bordeaux, declining to spare Louis van Gaal’s team from the sharp end of his tongue.
“I’d like to suggest and persuade you urgently to adopt different methods compared to those in the first half. Otherwise, Bayern aren’t going to follow a successful course this season,” the FCB boss warned. The 2-1 reverse in France, FCB’s first group stage defeat in four years, means the Bundesliga giants have only four points from their first three matches, their worst start to a Champions League campaign since 2002. Bayern have slipped from first to third in the group standings. “We need six points from our two home games against Bordeaux and Haifa,” Rummenigge admonished.
At the start of Wednesday’s match, the Bavarians were gifted the chance of making real progress towards the knockout stages at an early stage, after Michael Ciani’s own goal handed them a sixth-minute lead. “It was exactly what we wanted,” Rummenigge reflected.