Kimmich is THE midfield for Bayern, everyone else is a cosplayer. And some of the Bayern fans and pundits scapegoat Kimmich while Goretzka or Laimer are casually playing as AM’s.
Lots of discussion in the last few weeks and in yesterday’s match thread if Bayern is a better team without Kimmich in the midfield and while I don’t want to argue for one side or the other, I do find it interesting how different the play styles are.
“minutes 1-39” vs. “minutes 1-62” sure does smell fishy
That’s when the first subs were made
I haven’t seen the Bayern vs Dortmund game apart from some highlights, so I can’t comment on that. Vs Galatasaray, Kimmich was vital in getting out of the high press though and did a very good job.
That advanced press of Galatasaray also meant open space in the middle of the pitch and Bayern going at 5 or 6 players with the ball once they got out of the initial press, which they most often did.
Ultimately, I think such charts should always be evaluated with the defensive concept of the opponent in mind.
We’re much better in possession with Kimmich on the field but he pretty much operate as lone #6 while his supposed Double Pivot partner (Goretzka/Laimer) play very high.
Goretzka basically played like AM leaving Kimmich alone and this is why we got exposed everytime there are a turnover in the midfield, I think with DM reinforcement our midfield will become more stabilized because Kimmich won’t have to cover the midfield area by himself, I really hope Tuchel got the reinforcement he wanted in January.
Without Kimmich, I wonder whether Kane would drop deeper and get more involved in build up, thus scoring less, but assisting more. Similar happened with Tottenham when players were out/midfield was just overall not good
Bayern played against Dortmund without Kimmich and Kane scored 3 goals.
Its always like this with a ball playing 6. Players move into attacking positions for the playmaker to pick a pass, if this goes wrong the defense is exposed.
That’s what I find more interesting here. Look at the average positions when kimmich is playing. All players are a lot more advanced than in the other picture, even defenders. A lot of interesting points to discuss further from this.
the biggest reason for that difference in player position (apart from extremely limited sample size) is most likely due to how high up the pitch galatasaray pressed vs how much space dortmund allowed for most the game
Looks like they play in a much more structured and balanced way without Kimmich
It’s very obvious that Kimmich is the main point of buildup whenever he plays, but it also opens up such easy counterplay that simply wasn’t there in the Dortmund game
All you have to do is press Kimmich, he will find a solution 98/100 times, but the 2 times he doesn’t you get a big chance (or a red like vs Darmstadt)
Idk how to fix it, not even a real #6 would help here, maybe he has to drop even further (Alonso style) to sit between the 2 CBs and have the coverage there
You fix it by stopping the passes to Kimmich just outside the 18 when he’s facing his own goal. He immediately gets pressed from behind and instead of going right back to Neuer, he tries to play his way out of it.
If he can’t handle that, you have to stop doing it. I cringe every time I see that pass and there’s a press coming.
If he can’t handle that, you have to stop doing it.
The thing is, he’s had multiple world class coaches with world class analytics teams and it’s still happening, at this point it surely isn’t fixable and/or a desirable outcome in the eyes of the coaches. Like surely this can’t still be a coincidence after all these years of this exact same thing happening, right?
The gamble might be that he unlocks more situations that ultimately beat out the risk of a massive turnover. Funny thing is with Upamecano/Kim starting, you have two excellent distributors of the ball anyway, but there still is an over-reliance on Kimmich in buildup.
IMO best useful would be him being used in a double pivot, or playing with 3 centre-backs.
3 CBs is my favourite too, especially since we have 3 world-class ones. Would need to sign 2 new ones though + Stani.
Its why so many teams run double pivots. Even Rodri runs in a double pivot. Modern DM is just too complicated and important to be done by a single player now.
Rodeo is big, strong and skillful. Even if you can match him physically, it is hard to take the ball away from him.
The only player I’ve seen him really struggle with is Kane, mostly because Kane is as big and stronger and pretty clever