Bremen (Germany) (AFP)
Bayern Munich won the 30th title of German champion in its history on Tuesday, the 8th consecutive, and especially the first major title awarded in European football since the post-coronavirus recovery.
The "Rekordmeister", who finished ten after the exclusion of Alphonso Davies for two warnings (79th), won behind closed doors 1-0 in Bremen thanks to a goal by Robert Lewandowski (43rd).
Munich now has 10 points ahead of its runner-up Dortmund, who can no longer join him, with only three games to play including one this Wednesday against Mainz (8:30 p.m.), for the 32nd day.
In this strange world of football at the time of Covid-19, the rigorous sanitary protocol gave the joy of the players the appearance of celebrating a team of juniors. Only the substitutes and the supervisors admitted to the bench were able to share the hugs with the eleven players on the lawn.
This victory in Bremen has been less controlled than the previous seven since the resumption of football in mid-May.
- Müller equals Ribéry -
Between the penultimate, in the fight to try to save his skin in extremis, and the team of stars of Bayern, the fight was however unequal. Hansi Flick had fielded his current team, and Lewandowski, who is living in one of his best seasons at 31, opened the scoring shortly before the break.
But the exclusion of Davies destabilized Bayern and gave wings to Bremen, which made run in the last minutes a few cold sweats on the back of the Bavarians, saved with the tips of their fingers by their goalkeeper Manuel Neuer in the 90th minute.
In the end, history will remember that Lewandowski reached the bar of 31 goals in a Bundesliga season, his new personal best. And that Thomas Müller joined Franck Ribéry at the very top of the ranking of the number of champion titles for a single player: nine!
For Hansi Flick, however, bombed coach in November after the dismissal of Niko Kovac, it is the first title of his career as a main coach. But he had already raised the "Schale", the trophy of the German champion four times, as a player with Bayern between 1986 and 1990.
This title, which seals the overwhelming domination of Bayern in Germany in the 21st century (15 Bundesliga since the year 2000), is however for the leaders only an essential minimum.
- On the way to the treble -
On July 4 in Berlin, the team will try to conquer a second consecutive national double in the final of the German Cup against Leverkusen. Before embarking once again in August to conquer the Champions League, which has eluded him since 2013.
If the champion is now known, the Bundesliga has not yet exhausted all its suspense. Mönchengladbach (59 pts), winner on Tuesday 3-0 of Wolfsburg, provisionally resumed in Leverkusen (57 pts) fourth place, synonymous with qualification for the Champions League 2020-2021. The Bayer receives Cologne on Wednesday to try to relocate.
Dortmund (66 pts), is firmly attached to his second place and already qualified for the next Champions League. The third is Leipzig (62 pts), still in the race for the quarter-finals of the current Champions League, which will end in August.
At the bottom of the table, the promoted Paderborn, beaten 1-0 by the Union Berlin, will not have survived his first Bundesliga season and will descend again next year in D2. The Arminia Bielefeld, sure to finish in the first two of D2, will however find the elite, eleven years after having left it.
© 2020 AFP