A highly controversial penalty put Bayern Munich on the road to victory against SC Freiburg. Thomas Müller also scored a dream goal in his anniversary game.
In the 2-0 (1-0) win on Sunday (01.09.2024), Harry Kane scored from the penalty spot for the record champions in the 38th minute. In the 59th minute, things became historic for Bayern: Thomas Müller was substituted on and made his 710th competitive appearance – overtaking club legend Sepp Maier and now holding the record. In the 78th minute, Müller crowned the celebrations with a beautiful goal to make it 2-0.
Slow start without any goal scenes
The party started rather slowly. For a quarter of an hour, hardly anything happened. Bayern had around 75 percent of the ball possession, but Freiburg's defense was solid. It wasn't until the 19th minute that things got interesting for the Sportclub's goal, when the guests combined on the right side: Michael Olise served Serge Gnabry, who freed Jamal Musiala in the center – but Lukas Kübler slid in at the last moment.
A quarter of an hour later, Freiburg was outmaneuvered again on the left side of the defense, the ball sailed over Joshua Kimmich and Olise into the center, where Kane won an aerial battle with Max Rosenfelder, hard but still within the rules. His header was lightly touched on the arm by Rosenfelder, and Kane immediately moved toward the corner flag.
VAR crew sends things to the screen
But the video crew in the Cologne basement needed to talk. Harm Osmers and his VAR assistant Mike Pickel called Dingert to the screen, and after thinking about it for a while he actually pointed to the penalty spot. There was definitely no unnatural hand movement, and it was not intentional either – Rosenfelder had been pushed down a little by Kane and tried to pull himself up with his sweeping arm movement. The fact that his arm was away from his body must have prompted him to award the penalty. But he obviously didn't feel comfortable about it, because he did it with an apologetic facial expression and gesture, as if to say: really stupid rule, but what can I do?
But he was wrong about that too: He could have done something. Nothing, that is – the discretion the referees were entitled to would have allowed that much. Kane then gave Freiburg goalkeeper Florian Müller no room to maneuver and scored safely to make it 1-0.
Freiburg simply does too little
Freiburg were of course honest about it, and coach Julian Schuster gave the team his opinion in a short and pithy way during the break. But there was no defiant reaction from his team. In the entire game, the sports club did almost nothing to turn the party around. There was neither speed nor ideas to be seen going forward, so that the central defenders Min-jae Kim and Dayot Upamecano, who by no means always seemed secure, were called upon far too rarely.
Bayern, for their part, did not set off any offensive fireworks, but controlled the action in midfield coolly and confidently. The duel was decided by Müller's dream goal: Palinha had passed the ball to Serge Gnabry, whose cross Müller plucked out of the air with a caressing movement and passed past his opponent in one go. He then scored with his left foot, making it 2-0, unstoppable for Müller.
Another penalty in injury time
In the 6th minute of injury time, there was another penalty, which was also very controversial: Ritsu Doan shot the ball from close range at Joao Palinha's thigh, from where the ball bounced onto the Portuguese's hand. This time Dingert pointed to the spot without VAR intervention, but Lucas Höler refused the gift – and shot the ball meters over Manuel Neuer's goal.
With two wins, Bayern coach Vincent Kompany has had a great start to the season – but it was not enough to take the lead in the table because FC Heidenheim has the better goal difference.
Munich in Kiel, Freiburg against Bochum
FC Bayern now has to play against newly promoted Kiel on Matchday 3 (14 September, 6:30 p.m.), while SC Freiburg plays away at VfL Wolfsburg (14 September, 3:30 p.m.).
