Bayern Munich 1 Leverkusen 1: Alonso’s team shows resilience, Pavlovic is a real eye-catcher and the rivalry is simmering

Bayern Munich and Bayer Leverkusen shared the points in the Allianz Arena and drew 1-1 in the Bundesliga after two incredible long-range goals. Leverkusen took the lead through Robert Andrich, but Aleksandar Pavlovic brilliantly equalized.

So no winner in Munich and no goals for Harry Kane or Michael Olise, but the biggest game of the season so far was full of riveting details.

Seb Stafford-Bloor analyzes the key talking points.

The other face of Leverkusen

What a contrast to the performance Bayer Leverkusen showed in Munich last year, when they twice came from behind to draw 2-2 and established themselves as a credible threat to Bayern.

On this night they played with determination and speed, looked incredibly dangerous on the counterattack and missed every possible chance. This weekend, Xabi Alonso seemed determined to show the other side of his team. Leverkusen were deeply conservative at the Allianz Arena and defended resolutely without ever really giving the impression that they could win the game. Even when they took the lead thanks to Andrich’s crisp shot from the edge of the penalty area, Bayern needlessly conceded a corner.

For readers in the UK…

Robert Andrich opens the scoring for Bayer Leverkusen at the Allianz Arena! 😲 pic.twitter.com/znBoXyCpav

— Sky Sports Football (@SkyFootball) September 28, 2024

For readers in the United States…

ANDRICH OPENS THE SCORING FOR LEVERKUSEN VS. BAVARIA IN THE ALLIANZ ARENA 🔥 pic.twitter.com/KvkfQvpkwv

– ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) September 28, 2024

Leverkusen’s total number of expected goals – a metric that measures the quality of their scoring opportunities – over the 90 minutes? 0.14. That’s what the story tells – and it was a surprise.

However, in the weeks since the defeat to RB Leipzig, talk of the defending champions has revolved around the number of goals they have conceded. Before this match day, only four teams in the Bundesliga had a worse defensive record.

With that in mind, Alonso’s team were remarkably tough. The only goal they conceded was a phenomenal long-range shot. The closest we came to conceding a second goal required a brilliant performance between Kane and Serge Gnabry (which ended with Gnabry hitting the post and then the crossbar).

So it wasn’t necessarily an inferior Leverkusen, even if the team was very different.

Pavlovic: A stunning goal and a brave performance

Without Pavlovic’s goal, all of Bayern’s football – they had 69 percent of ball possession – might have come to nothing.

Pavlovic was born in Munich and grew up in the FC Bayern academy. On match days in downtown Munich, his name can already be seen on dozens of replica jerseys on trains and in bars. He is a local and becomes a local hero. Not necessarily because of his goals, but because of what he brings to Bayern’s possession of the ball.

He really seems to enjoy playing under bright lights. One of his best performances last season came in the Champions League semi-final second leg against Real Madrid, when he nervelessly steered Bayern through the Bernabeu – with fewer than 20 senior national team appearances under his belt.

He is an expressive player who selects his passing targets quickly and distributes the ball cleverly. He is also adept in the way he makes himself available to receive passes and moves away from the players whose job it is to suppress him.

But he also has a short memory. He conceded the corner from which Leverkusen scored, and given how much was at stake, a weaker player might have faltered. No, he was the one who persuaded his teammates as they returned for the restart after Andrich’s goal, and as soon as the game started again he was immediately back in his rhythm, as if he had no responsibility for what had happened, it just happened.

Aleksandar Pavlović with an absolute SCREAMER to equalize for Bayern! 🚀 pic.twitter.com/p0qQVHgGN8

— Sky Sports Football (@SkyFootball) September 28, 2024

PAVLOVIĆ WITH AN UNREAL SHOT TO EQUALIZER FOR BAYERN MUNICH 😱 pic.twitter.com/RLfpAofh4a

– ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) September 28, 2024

Leverkusen brought a strong middle block to Munich and were determined to let Bayern play slowly and sideways. In response, Pavlovic was willing to take risks with his passes in order to gain possession of the ball quickly and offensively. That takes courage against Alonso’s team, who have so much speed and class on the counterattack and who have punished so many number 6 players for their inaccuracies in the past.

So he wasn’t flawless, but he also never stopped playing the way his team needed.

Simmering rivalry

This rivalry is a bit heated. Fernando Carro, Leverkusen’s chief executive, and Max Eberl, Bayern’s sporting director, do not get along and this has been simmering all summer when Jonathan Tah, excellent on Saturday, was likely to travel to Munich.

It never happened. Bayern were never able to fully raise the money. When asked about the negotiations at a fan forum, Carro spoke loosely and said he thought “nothing” of Eberl, “absolutely nothing”. This earned him a public denigration from Jan-Christian Dreesen, the CEO of FC Bayern.

This is a feud that goes back several years to Eberl’s time as sports director of Borussia Mönchengladbach and the controversial move of Florian Wirtz from Cologne to Leverkusen. Gladbach, Fortuna Düsseldorf, Cologne and Leverkusen, all from the same West German region, had a gentlemen’s agreement not to recruit young players from each other.

Wirtz is at the center of a growing rivalry (Sven Hoppe/picture Alliance via Getty Images)

In 2020, many believe that Leverkusen has broken this agreement. Wirtz has been with Cologne since he was a child and spent ten years at the club before leaving in 2020. Leverkusen believed that Wirtz was technically a senior player as his youth contract had expired. Others, including Eberl, disagreed and were openly critical.

This is particularly interesting as Bayern Munich’s transfer priority next summer is expected to be Wirtz.

Olise is beaming again

There were different dynamics all over the field that worked in different ways for both teams. There was no final outcome on Saturday, but the game was still exciting.

For Leverkusen, Granit

Olise was once again a distinct threat. He has made a great start to the Bundesliga (three goals and two assists in five games).

Olise, right, quickly gets used to German football (Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)

Perhaps his strongest virtue, however, is his variety and the variety of ways in which he challenges a defense. He can carry or create, drop deep and wide to the sideline or drive to the goal line. He combined well with Kane, who had scored ten goals in six games but failed to score a single goal against Leverkusen.

0 – For the first time in three years, Harry Kane failed to make a single shot as a starter in a league game, in Tottenham Hotspur’s away game against Crystal Palace in September 2021. Inconvenient. #FCBB04 pic.twitter.com/pDimbI41Rk

— OptaFranz (@OptaFranz) September 28, 2024

Olise’s confidence already gives him a talismanic glow. The background to this, of course, is that when he moved from Crystal Palace to Bayern, he swapped his counter-attacking system for something much more proactive and got used to a completely new style of play in a short space of time. His adjustment was almost immediate.

Behind Olise, Joshua Kimmich might have had his best game in months. He spent almost all of last season at right-back, but Vincent Kompany has moved Kimmich back into midfield to good effect. One aspect of Bayern’s setup under Kompany is to push Kimmich to the right side of his defense – like a reversal of the way Germany used Toni Kroos last summer – and then use his quick, diagonal crossfield to find Gnabry can be found on the opposite sideline. It is a weapon and, in addition to a combative, technically impressive performance, was part of Kimmich’s repertoire again on Saturday.

(Photo above: Pavlovic celebrates his equalizer; Sven Hoppe/picture Alliance via Getty Images)