In a tight game, Bayern were helped by head coach Julian Nagelsmann's famous magic touch: the head coach brought on Leroy Sané midway through the second half, and the sub scored the only goal of the game in a 1-0 win at Eintracht Frankfurt. "You can't always score four, five. We had to fight to earn the three points today," said striker Robert Lewandowski. His teammates also recognised the team's qualities that tipped the scales in the match. "Our mentality was really good," said Joshua Kimmich; "It was a battling win!'
Reaction from the Bayern camp:
Julian Nagelsmann: "The victory was very valuable. The next five games in the Bundesliga are very important. I'm very satisfied with the first half. Not scoring goals was the only missing piece. We played well. In the second half we should have scored earlier. Then we scored the goal and it got scrappy. Overall, if you look at the last few games, I think this game was a step in the right direction. I'm satisfied. We always had good control and did so very, very well for long stretches."
Robert Lewandowski: "We played well defensively and had the game under control. We scored one goal, you can't always score four or five. We had to fight to pick up all three points. Today we played well. That was important. We knew coming into the game that it's always difficult here. That's great. Congratulations to the whole team."
Joshua Kimmich: "It was a battling win. We did well and had good chances to take the lead earlier than we did. If we'd done that we could have ended the game more calmly. The way we played today was the right way. The mentality was really good. In the last ten, fifteen minutes we pushed forward. That was fun too. There's still a long way to go. We've often thought throughout the season we've had a bit of a cushion at the top. But if you stumble in one or two games, it tightens up again. We have to work hard. Our ambition must be to keep this lead up right to the end of the season."
Leroy Sané: "We defended well, allowed very little and tried to play our football. We knew we would have more space if we scored the first goal. That suited us very well today. We're very happy that we won here today."
Reaction from the Frankfurt camp:
Oliver Glasner (Eintracht Frankfurt head coach): "I'm very happy with my team's performance. We made it very difficult for Bayern. Bayern always have chances, of course. They do what they do very well and have tremendous quality. But we also had opportunities. We could have made more of the first half. In the end, it wasn't enough because we made one mistake too many, and right now we're not great at profiting from chances."
Kevin Trapp (Eintracht Frankfurt goalkeeper): "We all know that we have to play out of our skins to compete with Bayern. We put a lot into it. We didn't take advantage of the huge chance we had at the start of the game. That's how you lose the game 1-0. That's just the way it is against Bayern, that you can't keep everything out. Unfortunately, we didn't manage to get that bit of luck today, but we still put in a good performance."
The match report:
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