Pre-season poser for Guardiola
New Bayern coach watches side slip to 4-2 defeat in German Supercup
Pre-season is a curious rite of passage for soccer clubs, and can involve lengthy tours of far-off lands with a view more to the mechanism of the till than the team, or a more sedate agenda that rarely involves leaving the comfort of home.
Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich has largely opted for the latter, playing a few friendly matches in Germany, while popping over to Italy to face Brescia and a Paulaner XI, which was handed a 13-0 drubbing.
With the Bundesliga to start on August 9, Guardiola has less time than his European peers to prepare his side for the rigors of the season. A limbering-up against his former club, Barcelona, resulted in a 2-0 home win in the Allianz Arena and probably a good deal of Teutonic satisfaction at the prospect of another season of crushing all-comers ahead.
So it came as some surprise that last year’s treble-winners failed to add the German Supercup — in any European a trinket but a signal of intent also — to its haul at the weekend. Bayern’s opponent was Borussia Dortmund — by dint of finishing runner-up in both the league and the German Cup final to the Bavarian giant last season, and on the wrong end of a 2-1 scoreline in the Champions League final.
If ever there were cause for sporting revenge, that would just about do it. Dortmund ran out 4-2 victors in Guardiola’s first official game in charge and Jürgen Klopp erred on the side of not poking the bear with a stick, having relieved it of its honey: “Bayern are not our rivals this season [as they are in a league of their own]. We will compete with the other 16 teams but when we face Bayern we will always want to beat them,” said the Dortmund coach.
“They won and I am not here to analyze the game,” noted Guardiola. “I am satisfied with our performance. We did not lose because of the mistakes. We have a week, 10 days before the Bundelsiga starts. We lost 4-2 but I do not have the feeling that they are that much better. We will now correct our small mistakes.”
Real Madrid, meanwhile, beat Paris Saint-Germain 1-0 in preparation for the grandly named Guinness International Champions Cup, which takes place in venues across the USA but actually kicked off on Saturday in Mestalla, where Milan beat Valencia 2-1.
The mini-tournament is another attempt to convince Americans to embrace the beautiful game and has a cast to match its ambitions: Chelsea, Everton, Juventus, Inter and LA Galaxy complete the draw.
Barcelona convened for its first training session on Monday with its Confederations Cup players, including Neymar, freshly available. On Saturday, Gerardo Martino was a spectator as his new team dismantled Norwegian top-tier side Valerenga 7-0 in Oslo. Santos, Neymar’s former club, visits Camp Nou on Friday before the serious business of shifting shirts in Asia gets underway with matches against Thailand in Bangkok and a Malaysia XI in Kuala Lumpur. The Spanish season begins on August 17.