Five perfect finishes to finish off a perfect week! Leon Goretzka, Harry Kane, Mathys Tel and twice Thomas Müller scored in Bayern's commanding 5-1 away win against 1. FC Union Berlin. The uncompromising and unstoppable goals summed up FCB's recent form. Ten days prior to the first leg of the Champions League semi-final against Real Madrid, the Bavarians will take some stopping.
'Still have a big goal'
“We still have a big goal in the Champions League and are trying to keep this season alive,” midfielder Goretzka summarised his team's successful performance in Germany's capital city. After 29 minutes, the 29-year-old opened the scoring for Bayern Munich at the Stadion an der Alten Förtsterei by hammering the ball under the crossbar. Later, he also assisted for Müller to make it 5-0.
Goretzka thus added another to a string of good recent performances. Now involved in 12 goals (5 goals, 7 assists), the Germany international has equalled his own personal record from the 2018/2019 season, with nine of those contributions coming in 2024 alone.
Tuchel: Compliments to the team
However, much hard work lay ahead for Bayern before Goretzka celebrated this accomplishment, as both teams battled it out even after Bayern's lead. “Overall, we were aggressive and got stuck into the duels,” Müller analysed. “Compliments to the the team. It was a team effort. It was a complicated game because Union played with two strikers and two number 10s,” head coach Thomas Tuchel praised following a compact defensive performance and an attack which provided a moment to remember with the second goal of the evening.
With seconds to go in the first half, Kane scored a direct free-kick to further extend his incredible record in his first season in the Bundesliga. Now involved in 51 goals (40 goals, 11 assists), the Englishman is the number one striker in all of Europe's big five leagues and has set a new personal best. “The second goal just before the break obviously played into our hands,” Müller explained. “We got rolling at the beginning of the second half and were unstoppable.”
Müller provides a Müller moment
The Bavarian icon played no small part, either. Müller scored the third goal after 53 minutes and added to fourth by Tel with the fifth and final Bayern goal of the day on 66 minutes. In his 400th Bundesliga appearance, the 34-year-old once more recorded impressive numbers. With this brace on Matchday 30, the attacker has now scored on all 34 matchdays of a Bundesliga season. “That's an incredibly important statistic. It meant a great deal for me to score today, “ Müller joked in typical manner and added: “I had no idea and didn't even realise what matchday it is."
What Müller certainly did pay attention to, however, was the fact that Bayern recorded their third successive win in all competitions. “We're happy. It was the perfect end to a perfect week,” said head coach Tuchel, who emphasised the demands on his team despite the end of the Bundesliga title race. “You're always under pressure when you play for Bayern Munich. We owe that to ourselves. We have the highest demands of ourselves and we want to win wherever we go.”
That certainly applies to the six competitive fixtures left of this season. And if Bayern continue to present themselves in the form they've shown recently, there's a possible seventh game waiting in June...
The rest of the post-match reaction:
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