BEVERLY HILLS, March 21, (THEWILL) – On Saturday, a resilient 10-man Bayern Munich pulled off an emphatic 4-0 victory over VfB Stuttgart at the Allianz Arena in München. Although the game started very promisingly for the visitors and Bayern were considered shorthanded with the very early red card issued to Canadian youngster Alphonso Davies, Stuttgart could not take advantage of the plenty of chances they got early on.
Bayern responded ruthlessly to being one-man short. In the space of six first half minutes, Serge Gnabry had a goal sandwiched between two Robert Lewandowski strikes to take the game away from the away side in a blitzkrieg Stuttgart had no way recovering from in time.
The Polish goal machine secured his hattrick before half time, with a fine low finish to sap any remaining morale away from the visiting side, whose superior number advantage counted for nothing.
The second half was a more sedate affair, with nothing to register except Bayern’s control of their stroll to victory, and the making of a clear yet emphatic statement of their ambitions for the season in the Bundesliga where they are setting records for the fun of it.
While Lewandowski went home with the ball, Bayern opened up a four points lead at the top of the league table leaving Stuttgart struck in eighth. Ahead of the fixture, Stuttgart was hoping to shock their hosts in their push for European qualification with a few vulnerabilities that appeared to be peaking through the Bayern side.
Statisticians had flashed the deceptive headline that Bayern had conceded a goal in each of their last nine Bundesliga home games and could be about to concede again against Stuttgart. The last time the Bavarian champions had such a run of nine games without clean sheets was in 2018, though they last waited longer for a clean sheet at home in 2008, when it took 12 straight conceding games before ending a game without conceding under Jürgen Klinsmann.
The 12th minute red card to Davies so early in the match must have given Stuttgart extra motivation to seek a breach of the Bayern goal but it also served to jolt Bayern from the lethargic manner they started the fixture and set them on their way to claiming a resounding 4-0 victory.
It was a consecutive home hattrick for their prolific forward because the Pole found the back of the net three times against Borussia Dortmund on his last league outing at the Allianz Arena. He needed only 39 minutes to repeat the feat on Saturday.
With the first goal, Lewandowski climbed into second place in the Bundesliga’s all-time top scorer charts as he chalked up his 269th goal in the division, surpassing Klaus Fischer with whom he had previously been tied at 268. But, he added two more and should have made it four just past the hour mark but miscued in uncharacteristic fashion after being picked out by Benjamin Pavard’s low cross later in the game.
The Bundesliga second-best record for hattricks is held by Mario Gomez, who coincidentally played for Bayern between August 2009 and July 2013 but now features for Stuttgart. His 10 hattricks was surpassed by Lewandowski’s 12 before the Pole extended the record with his 13th.
Lewandowski has 35 league goals in the season and Gerd Muller’s record of 40 in a single campaign appears very much within his capacity to reach and even overtake in the German top-flight in the eight games that are left in the 2020/2021 calendar.
Muller, who was nicknamed “Der Bomber” for his renown as one of the finest goalscorers of the game, holds the outright scoring record of 365 in all competitions of German football. It is not merely fantastical to believe that Lewandowski may get to that mark having crossed to 271 and, at the age of 32, still looks to have plenty of years at the top level.
He made his clinical form in front of goal very clear on Saturday. Three shots on target resulted in a perfect hattrick, which went with his right foot for the first, a header for the second and his left for the third. Apart from his goals, the general team performance has seen them altogether make records to give them enough time to break those very same records.
For instance, Bayern have scored in each of their last 61 matches in all competitions. This equals their own club record as since the start of the Bundesliga in 1963, only one team has previously managed that feat: Bayern themselves did so between March 2013 and April 2014 another set of 61 matches.
They also set a brand new Bundesliga record for goals as they have now scored 78 goals after 26 Matchdays, a demonstration of their creativity in the middle of the park and devastating finishing.
The Bavarian champions also love playing against and beating Stuttgart because of the 104 times both sides have met, Bayern have won 66 times. It is a record that beats another of their previous ones because no team has won that many times against a single opponent in the history of the Bundesliga with the old record being Bayern’s 65 wins against Hamburg
About the Author
