Match date: 22 August 2014

The opening match of the new Bundesliga season featuring last year’s winners in Bayern Munich, which includes several World Cup winners, and Wolfsburg, who qualified for the group stages of the Europa League after finishing fifth in last year’s campaign.

Guardiola and Bayern will certainly be looking to improve upon last year’s season. Despite winning the Bundesliga very early on, their Champions League campaign was poor. In this particular match, Bayern looked like something of a 3-3-1-3 early on, but changed to a 4-2-3-1.

Wolfsburg set out in a 4-4-1-1/4-4-2 with new signing Aaron Hunt playing behind Olic.

Bayern’s Three at the Back/Horizontal Full Back

During Pep’s time at Barcelona, he occasionally played three at the back, usually sticking with his preferred 4-3-3 shape. At the start of this match, however, Bayern looked to be playing three at the back with Lahm, Dante, and Badstuber. However, this was not a new idea by Guardiola, but rather another solution to preventing counter attacking opportunities for the opposition while his team is in possession. At Barcelona, Guardiola allowed Dani Alves almost complete control of the right side of the field, which meant that his side would theoretically be exposed for counter attacks. To limit these opportunities, while still allowing Alves to act as a winger, Guardiola presented two different solutions: drop Busquets between the centre backs and allow them to spread wide to cover the space vacated by the full backs or play a horizontal full back which stays and forms a back three, allowing the defensive line to shift and fill the space vacated by the more adventurous full back. Eric Abidal was the prime example of this. He was a full back, and sometimes got forward, but much of his play was to allowed Alves to get forward. He would stay on the left side of Barcelona’s back line, but his presence allowed Pique and Puyol to shift over and cover Alves’ space.

In this match, for about the opening 20 minutes, Pep revisited the use of a horizontal full back, this time in Philipp Lahm, allowing Bernat to get forward and form a 3-3-1-3. Below, you can see a good example of this. Lahm, Dante, and Badstuber are in a line at the back. The next line consists of Robben, Guadino, and Bernat, although Alaba was usually central alongside Guadino rather than Robben in the line.

It caused problems for Bayern, however, as Wolfsburg had a good spell of attacking possession, especially in wide areas as Bernat’s advanced position opened up space on the right while Philipp Lahm’s deep positioning invited both De Bruyne and Ricardo Rodriguez to push forward. The best parts of Wolfsburg’s play in the opening 25 minutes came down the left through the two aforementioned players.

At the 25 minute mark, Pep changed this. Not only was the three at the back not working well, but Guadino and Alaba were constantly having to drop very deep to get the ball. As a result, Bayern reverted to a more traditional back four with Lahm, Dante, Badstuber, and Bernat. Below, you can see them the defensive line with Bayern possessing the ball at the midway line.

At this point, the width in midfield now being provided by Lahm and Bernat allowed space to open up for Guadino and Alaba. Guadino was still occupying the space same on the pitch, but rather than receiving passes being played back to him from the forward players, who were being sent longer passes by the Bayern centre backs to bypass Wolfsburg midfield, Guadino was now able to receive from the centre backs and play forward.

Bayern Attack Down the Right

Once Bayern got control of the match, they were able to find a lot of freedom down the right side of their attack through Robben, Lahm, and Müller, who drifted over to overload that side. Lewandowski usually stayed central, which forced the Wolfsburg centre backs to stay central rather than slide over to support Rodriguez and De Bruyne, who failed to track Lahm effectively. Mario Götze, who was deployed on the left at the start of the match, was given freedom to roam and was helpful when coming central as it allowed the creation of overloads on the right, by allowing Müller to shift to the right. Götze was incredibly important for Dortmund during his last season there because of his ability to create overloads in the wide areas and now at Bayern both he and Müller have the same ability to recognise the space and moments to do so. Below, you can see an example of all five of the Bayern players mentioned above attacking down the right, which resulted in a corner kick.

Bayern’s first goal came after a pass from Lahm, who was being pressed by both Rodriguez and De Bruyne, found Robben isolated in a 1v1 against Luiz Gustavo. Robben went to his left, cut back to his right, and delivered a ball into the box that Müller steered into the net with his shin.

Wolfsburg Changes

At half time, Dieter Hecking took off Aaron Hunt and replaced him with Maximilian Arnold and immediately Wolfsburg looked relatively better as Hecking pushed his team up the field and had his front players looking to press Bayern when the Bavarians were in possession in their defensive third. Unfortunately, the numbers forward allowed Bayern to score a counter attacking goal early in the second half after Robben dispossessed Luiz Gustavo.

Wolfsburg did not stop pressing though. Olic and Arnold put pressure on Dante and Badstuber, while Guilavogui and Gustavo pushed forward to support their forwards’ pressing. As you can see below, Wolfsburg were now getting numbers forward and forcing Bayern to play back to Neuer.

Their pressing, while leaving them open to counter attacks, as it for Robben’s goal, also earned them a goal. Olic’s goal was the result of Wolfsburg pressing. A ball from Neuer was mis-controlled by Bernat for a Wolfsburg throw in, which Olic was able to receive and turn with before dipping the ball over Neuer.

Conclusion

Bayern had chances to extend their lead, but were lucky to come out of the match with three points as Junior Malanda missed a sitter. Wolfsburg looked better in the second half, creating chances, mostly through their pressing and Hecking should be relatively pleased with his side’s performance.

Guardiola’s experimentation continues and he was still without many first team players, especially in centre midfield. Gaudino, who is just 17, and Alaba played well in their roles, but will see their time in those positions limited as the likes of Thiago and Schweinsteiger return to fitness.