On Saturday evening at the Allianz Arena, Bayern Munich dominated the visiting Hamburger SV team from start to finish en route to an impressive 5-0 victory. The reigning German Champions basically secured the three points before the half-time whistle by scoring four goals inside the opening half hour, courtesy of one apiece from Serge Gnabry, Aleksandar Pavlovic, Harry Kane, and Luis Diaz.
The home team was absolutely unstoppable during the opening forty-five-minute period. The goal-scoring chances in the second half weren’t as abundant as in the first half, but Kane rounded off the scoring just past the hour mark to complete his brace with an excellent strike on the counter attack.
With Chelsea visiting the Allianz Arena on Wednesday, Vincent Kompany wisely made all five available substitutions in the second half. There were many positives from Saturday’s resounding victory. Ahead of the visit from the Club World Cup Champions, let’s now take a look at some key takeaways from the 5-0 trouncing of Hamburg.
Impressive pressing
Bayern’s midfield pivot of Joshua Kimmich and Aleksandar Pavlovic seldom gave the opposition any time and space in the middle of the park, but no player exhibited the hunger to apply the press more than Konrad Laimer.
The 28-year-old Austrian supplemented the attack down the right flank and combined beautifully with Michael Olise to wear down the opposition. More often than not if an attack was interrupted Laimer applied the counter press to excellent effect. Most of Bayern’s attacking threats, particularly in the first half, came from the right side and it was in no small part due the efforts of Konrad Laimer.
Amazingly, on two occasions Laimer was the player seen leading the press. The second instance occurred after he was switched from right-back to the left-back role in the second half.