Talk about an ass-beating. Coming off a huge, totally unexpected Arsenal home win in the last round of Champions League matches, Bayern made no mistake about who’s really the better team and pasted the Gunners, 5-1 today.
This was more like the Bayern team we expected to all but mathematically knock Arsenal out of the Champions League the round before. They completely dominated possession of the ball, slid into the Arsenal box whenever they wanted, and never looked seriously threatened going the other way.
Lookit the shots!
Lookit the attacking third passes!
This flat out wasn’t fair!
Müller scored twice, Lewandowski, Robben, and Alaba scored once, Costa and Coman dribbled past guys for fun, while Alonso and Thiago tried to see if between the two of them they could rack up more passes than Arsenal’s entire team (alas, falling short at 243 to Arsenal’s 341). The cruelest part of it all was how effortless they made it look. Besides this Alaba blast from outside the box, worth celebrating because of who scored it and how—
—Bayern barely even acknowledged their mastery. After each goal they’d stroll over towards the byline, pat the scorer on the back, then trudge back to the halfway line and do it all over again. Bayern treated the match like one of those late season Bundesliga romps where they’d already wrapped up the title but still had to show up if only to keep up their match sharpness. It was mean, it was brutal, and it was awesome.
Photo via AP