Smells like team spirit in Bavaria.
Bayern Munich is off to a roaring start to 2024/25, having won its opening fifteen competitive matches heading into a blockbuster Champions League showdown against Paris Saint-Germain this week. It has been quite a transition from the turbulence of recent years to the steady aura of calm and inevitability the team exudes now under second-year coach Vincent Kompany.
Midfielder and captain-in-waiting Joshua Kimmich reflected on the changes in the wake of Bayern’s latest triumph — a 3-0 stomping of Bayer Leverkusen, the latest other team to wear the Bundesliga crown, with Bayern having deployed a heavily-rotated XI at that.
“When I joined ten years ago, we were incredibly well-stocked individually,” Kimmich said in remarks captured by Sky Germany journalist Kerry Hau. “We had 23, 24, 25 world-class players back then. As a young player, it was difficult for me to break through. But when I see now how we function as a team and how we rejoice with and for each other… when I see the way we bring the principles onto the pitch, how one runs for the other… then that’s already very special!
“That wasn’t so common; it was different ten years ago… back then we had a bit more egoism in the team. Now we have a lot of players who are outstanding in quality but put themselves at the service of the team.”
