0: 5 cup failure in Gladbach: amazement at the collective failure of Bayern

A few days ago, the famous rifle throw from Bökelberg was celebrated for the 50th time, which was extensively celebrated in Mönchengladbach.

Even a new book has been published on the events surrounding the legendary 7: 1 against Inter Milan, about a spectacle that is lonely at the top of the ranking of the best games in the history of Borussia Mönchengladbach.

The rifle throw evening will not lose this status, because the flight of the Coke can to the head of the Italian Robert Boninsegna and the cancellation of the result will remain unique for all eternity. But in the football artistry category, the 5-0 win against FC Bayern on Wednesday evening should come very close to the performance from 1971.

Sports director Max Eberl spoke of a “magical evening” and a “frenzy” that gripped the team and the fans. Coach Adi Hütter had seen his team “an almost perfect game”, and FC Bayern suffered the worst humiliation since their 5-2 defeat in the 2011 DFB Cup final against BVB. The people of Munich seemed helpless and overwhelmed like amateurs who were amazed to see how well such a top team can play. He was "absolutely shocked," said Hasan Salihamidzic, Bayern's sports director. “We weren't involved in a duel, we didn't switch and let the guts be bought off in every situation”. In fact, the vulnerability of the hegemon from Munich was just as spectacular as the unleashed game of the Gladbachers.

"I've never seen such a collective failure by a Bayern team at such an important game myself," said Thomas Müller, who waited a long time for "the FC Bayern rage engine to start." But nothing something like that happened. Filled with a shimmering energy, the Gladbach team led after goals by the great Manu Koné (2nd), and Ramy Bensebaini (15th, 21st) early 3-0. The 2-0 win was a small masterpiece, a ravishingly beautiful combination precise and purposeful as Lionel Messi's FC Barcelona are playing here at the zenith of success.

Borussia could have led 4-0 or 5-0 at halftime, also because Munich defenders Dayot Upamecano, Benjamin Parvard, Alphonso Davies and Lucas Hernandez were completely beside themselves and were overrun by the unleashed Breel Embolo. Although many observers, knowing the Munich forces, could still imagine that FC Bayern would come back again. This danger was then averted with Embolos goals to 4-0 (51st) and 5-0 (57th). With a standing ovation twenty minutes before the end, the Swiss player was replaced by Marcus Thuram, who had been injured for a long time.

The return of the French, who had been missing so much recently, was a small piece of the mosaic of this night of pure Mönchengladbach football luck. “And you want to be German champions?” Sang the Gladbach fans while the corner with the Munich supporters was already half empty ten minutes before the final whistle. And when at some point the people of Gladbach returned to reality in a traffic jam from this surreal football show, a few questions came into focus that will only be answered in the coming weeks.

Is that the final exemption for the Gladbachers who started the season so tough? "That must be an initial spark," said Hütter, but he must expect that the next opponent VfL Bochum (Sunday, 5.30 p.m. at Dazn and in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga) will offer more resistance than this desolate Munich team. Eberl also stated that every player now has to know what Borussia is capable of, "that is now also the benchmark," he said.

And what does this result do to Bayern? Will the anger engine start? Was it just the lack of energy from coach Julian Nagelsmann, who was still absent after his Covid illness? Or does this experience cause greater damage to self-confidence? In any case, Thomas Müller's words contained traces of self-doubt, which was actually unknown in Munich: "We'll see in the next few weeks how we react after a game like this," said the attacker. “We are used to reacting after negative experiences. But that's easy to say. "

At some point there was even discussed the question of whether the debates about Joshua Kimmich's stance on vaccination and Hernandéz's just averted prison sentence contributed to this collapse, which Salhamidzic described as a "collective blackout". "Of course you have that a bit in your head that there aren't such nice stories in the background," said the sports director. But actually such a debacle, to which everyone contributed, cannot be explained by these incidents.

And so they hope in Munich that this absolutely amazing experience will remain an isolated one-off event over the course of the season.

It is possible that Union Berlin, the next opponent of FC Bayern (Saturday, 3.30 p.m. on Sky and in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga), will feel the whole Mia-San-Mia anger on Saturday and run over it at the Alte Försterei will.