Bayern Munich Meet Surprise Package RB Leipzig in Echo Of Christmas Past

Nobody expected this. Bayern Munich’s final match before the Bundesliga’s month-long Winterpause looked like—when we first glimpsed the fixtures in pre-season—a coast against promoted opposition. Instead the visit of RB Leipzig, level with the champions at the top on 36 points, will decide who settles down for Christmas lunch with the honorary title of Herbstmeister, or autumn champions.

As the best home team in Germany so far meets the most prolific point-gathers away from home, something has to give, and it promises to be dramatic.

Leipzig, a young, fit side based on pressing rather than possession, will go to Bavaria full of confidence, as well they should. Their rise has been an object lesson in collective excellence, and they are unlikely to panic or change their game to face Bayern.

If we are just about getting used to Leipzig as the real thing, it doesn’t mean we won’t take a moment and pinch ourselves when considering the speed of their ascent. They were a side who, after all, were promoted from Bundesliga 2 in second place, five points behind champions Freiburg, who sit in a far more realistic 10th place. Even bearing in mind parent company Red Bull’s resources, it’s a situation that takes some absorbing.

Yet if the scenario of Wednesday night is an unlikely one, it is not entirely unprecedented. It recalls Bayern’s final home game before the break in 2008-09, when TSG 1899 Hoffenheim were the visitors to the Allianz Arena. The top-flight first-timers, coached by Ralf Rangnick (who is now, of course, Leipzig’s sporting director), arrived with a similar lack of inferiority complex.

They took the lead through goal machine Vedad Ibisevic, and even after Philipp Lahm’s equaliser, were within touching distance of clinching that Herbstmeister title when Luca Toni broke their hearts with a stoppage-time winner.

Hoffenheim still enjoyed the break on top of the table, by goal difference, after they drew with Schalke 04 the following week and Bayern could only do likewise at Stuttgart, conceding their own stoppage-time goal in the shape of a Sami Khedira equaliser for the Swabians.

That Bayern team, coached by Jurgen Klinsmann, were pretty good at shooting themselves in the foot, of course. He was fired in spring, and it was Wolfsburg who eventually won the title.

Winter was pretty much as good as it got …

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