When the big FC Bayern loses

Yes, even the Superduperbayers, the serial winners and the gluttonous can really go under. On Wednesday evening in the second round of the Cup at Borussia Mönchengladbach, the great FC Bayern conceded their highest defeat in the DFB Cup with 0: 5.

Sports director Hasan Salihamidzic found the performance “shocking” and Thomas Müller said: “I have never seen a collective failure of a Bayern team in such an important game myself, so it’s a bit difficult to grasp at first.”

Müller can at least comfort himself with the fact that it was not the first Bayern defeat in the club’s history and in fact there was some real clapping in the past. Given the occasion, we therefore look back on some surprising and legendary defeats.

1974/75 – 0: 6 at Kickers Offenbach

At the beginning of the 1974/75 season, Bayern are last. Only briefly, but violently: On the first day of the game it is 0: 6 at Kickers Offenbach. The game will be played in Frankfurt because the Bieberer Berg is getting a new lawn. The Munich team had previously won three German championships in a row. There are six players on the pitch in Frankfurt who had won the World Cup a few weeks earlier. With the exception of Jupp Kapellmann, they were all in the final.

But in everyday league life Offenbach – with Otto Rehhagel as coach – is a few sizes too big on this sultry August Saturday in front of 35,000 spectators in the Waldstadion. Erwin Kostedde (two goals), Winfried Schäfer, Dieter Schwemmle, Sigfried Held and Egon Bihn give the current winner of the European Champions Cup a real treat. Even after that, it will not be Bayern’s season in the Bundesliga, they finish tenth. For this they get the European Cup again.

1991/92 – 2: 6 at B 1903 Copenhagen

In the 1991/92 season, Bayern’s jersey is not the only new one (see above). The team is in a state of upheaval following the departure of Stefan Reuter and Jürgen Kohler and the end of Klaus Augenthaler’s career, so the demands are unusually modest. Even Uli Hoeneß speaks a sentence for which his membership card would be withdrawn today because of behavior that is damaging to the club: “We do not start the season with the aim of becoming champions.” He is right.

Even the first home game is lost 1: 2 against the later relegated Hansa Rostock. And that is just the beginning. In the further course of the season, more home defeats followed, including against the Stuttgarter Kickers (1: 4) and in the DFB Cup against the second division Homburg (2: 4).

But the low point is the first leg in the second round of the Uefa Cup at B 1903 Copenhagen. Sören Lerby is now sitting in the coaching bench as the successor to the dismissed Jupp Heynckes. The game in his Danish homeland is his third as boss and it ends with his third defeat. After a 1-1 break at the break, it was 2: 6 in the end.

Lerby remains only an intermezzo and will be replaced after a few months by Erich Ribbeck, who previously represented Bavaria’s main sponsor, Opel.

“Sir” Erich at least prevents the worst and at least leads the team to tenth place at the end of the season, after having walked dangerously close to the relegation zone in the meantime.

1997/98 – 0: 1 against the 1. FC Kaiserslautern

At the start of the 1997/98 season, promoted Kaiserslautern comes to the Munich Olympic Stadium – with trainer Otto Rehhagel. He had been dismissed 15 months earlier at Bayern after a 0-1 home defeat against Hansa Rostock. Since then, Munich has not lost at home and had become champions in 1997 under coach Giovanni Trapattoni. Bayern have a hard time against the edgy Palatine, in the 80th minute the Dane Michael Schönberg heads the 1-0 winning goal after a free kick.

“We can’t let ourselves be driven crazy now,” said Lothar Matthäus after the game. And President Franz Beckenbauer says: “It is better to lose the first game than the last, now you know where to go.” By “they” he means the players, but they will never take the lead for the entire season, too if, unlike Kaiserslautern, they win the last game.

Although there is a duel with Kaiserslautern throughout the season, FCK is always ahead. Before the second leg on the Betzenberg, Bayern are four points behind – after that it is even seven. At 0-2 they were again without a goal, and even if Kaiserslautern wobbles a bit later in the season, the championship is pre-decided. From Bayern’s point of view, what remains to be remembered is the angry speech by coach Trappatoni (“What allow Strunz?”), And in the end the team won the DFB Cup in addition to the runner-up.

2000/01 – 2: 4 i. E. at 1. FC Magdeburg

In the second round of the cup, Bayern have to go to 1. FC Magdeburg, the only GDR European Cup winner, who was in the top league at the time. The 26,000 spectators in the sold out Ernst-Grube-Stadion witness a typical cup fight in which the outsider’s chest gets bigger by the minute. Magdeburg finally prevailed on penalties. Ottmar Hitzfeld then says: “I am immensely disappointed. A normal performance would have been enough. “The Bayern coach was not entirely innocent of the departure, he had rotated personnel in view of the supposedly easy opponent.

There are more setbacks as the season progresses. In the second round of the Champions League, Bayern lost 3-0 at Olympique Lyon, after which President Franz Beckerbauer complained: “This is not football, this is Uwe Seeler’s traditional team, old-school football.” Bundesliga not, in spring it sets home defeats against Bremen and Schalke. But in the end S04 is only a master of hearts, the title goes back to Munich. And not only that: Bayern also win the Champions League – after a penalty shoot-out against FC Valencia. Of the players who started almost seven months earlier in Magdeburg, only three will play from the start in this final.

2011/12 – 2: 5 against Borussia Dortmund

In 2012 Bayern will not be the German champions for the last time. Jupp Heynckes took over the Munich team for the third time as coach. With him, Manuel Neuer comes as the new number one. Everything is going according to plan until the 19th Bundesliga matchday, Bayern are leaders. But then Borussia Dortmund takes over the top and no longer gives it up. BVB wins both games of the season 1-0, but the 2: 5 in the cup final on May 12th at the Berlin Olympic Stadium is almost even more bitter. “We put in a disastrous performance defensively. But we have a big goal in mind next Saturday, ”said Heynckes after the game.

Bayern meet Chelsea in the Champions League in the “home final”. But here, too, there is no happy ending, the Londoners triumph in the penalty shoot-out. The season for Bayern ends in disaster by their standards – they finish second three times. A year later, however, they retaliated with the triple of championship, cup and Champions League. Dortmund was defeated 2-1 in the European final.

2020/21 – 5: 6 after penalties at Holstein Kiel

Special games require special jerseys. This also applies to the FC Bayern Cup at Holstein Kiel last season. Even if not necessarily in the way the people of Munich thought it would in advance.

In the second round match in Kiel, Bayern played for the first (and only) time in special jerseys designed by Pharrell Williams and which are now being sold for a good cause. Their appearance is based on a historical model: the Bayern jerseys from 1991 to 1993. “They were and still are expressive, visual statements from a great design era,” says Jürgen Rank, chief designer at Bayern outfitter Adidas.

On closer inspection, however, the choice of this jersey was not necessarily the happiest. With and in him, the people of Munich have not won a single title in two years, which from today’s perspective seems almost surreal. After all, they didn’t pull it anymore after the lost penalty shoot-out – the equalizing goal of the second division team to 2-2 had previously fallen deep in stoppage time – and later won their ninth championship title in a row.