Bayern Munich beat Borussia Dortmund 2-1 to win the Franz Beckenbauer Super Cup thanks to goals from Nathaniel Brown and Michael Olise, although Fábio Silva scored to close the gap late on. Here are some observations from Bayern’s first competitive match of the season: Although it is natural as a Bayern fan to start the season with joy and fully anticipate the wonderful football the Bavarians played last season after such a long summer break, it takes time for the team to shake off the rust, get back to full match fitness and rediscover the mechanisms built throughout the season. Not everything will return in the first game. This was made very clear by the imperfect performance of the two Beckenbauer Super Cup finalists. And still… Bayern outplayed Dortmund in the first half Somehow, the venue for the Super Cup was going to be Signal Iduna Park, Dortmund’s home stadium, making this a Dortmund home game and a chance for last season’s Bundesliga runners-up to send a signal to the rest of the Bundesliga: this Bayern team can be beaten. Armed with multiple intriguing new faces and their more than 80,000 fans behind them, Dortmund set out to make a point. However, in the first 45 minutes they made a mistake. Dortmund failed to register a single shot on goal while Bayern scored twice and could have scored more goals. The home team showed very little initiative and allowed the Bavarians to camp in their field and besiege their goal. Bayern may have lined up with a makeshift solution in Brown’s number 10 position because Lennart Karl, Serge Gnabry and Jamal Musiala were unavailable for the match (and Ismael Saibari presumably not fit to play the full 90 minutes), but Dortmund were unable to use that to their advantage. Meanwhile, Bayern were still fighting their rust, Brown scored a goal, showed plenty of promise but put in an ultimately inconsistent performance, while Michael Olise and Harry Kane showed that this was their first start since the World Cup. But they still recorded 11 shots, created plenty of chances and looked several notches above their opponents. Olise’s goal just before half-time should have indicated a comfortable end to the game for the Bavarians. But Dortmund grew in the second half. It can be assumed that Niko Kovač treated his team with a blow dryer during the break, because they put pressure on Bayern from the start. He was far from perfect and all too often his attacks ended in poor technical execution. But they made Bayern sweat more in the first half of the second half than in the first. And they never disappeared. While Bayern visibly took their foot off the accelerator, Dortmund stayed in the game despite the deficit, always working to try to close the gap. Both teams exchanged great opportunities before Dortmund finally got their goal in the 75th minute thanks to Silva’s goal. Bayern will be frustrated, having previously had chance after chance to end the game. Olise, despite his goal, was especially guilty of wasting some good openings. This season will be similar to last. Although it was an up-and-down game and both teams were fighting rust, it was clear that Bayern were doing many of the same things they did last season. Most, if not all, of last season’s strengths were very evident: the automatisms, the patterns of play, the outrageous technical quality, the ball control from midfield, the high line, Kane’s long passes, it was all there. Unfortunately, the same problems seem to exist as well. Bayern failed to calm the game once Dortmund gained a foothold again and lost the ball foolishly. Joshua Kimmich and Manuel Neuer were especially to blame for this. The team also experienced lapses in concentration, Dortmund’s forwards found too much space behind Bayern’s full-backs too often and the lack of midfield cover to help made everything worse. It was nothing terrible and Bayern still emerged victorious, but on any other day this kind of defensive performance could have been bad. The 2025/26 season was the Bavarians’ most successful season in six years. And it is important to recapture all the strengths of last season. However, one repetition will not be considered good enough. Bayern’s task this season is to build on what came before. This performance didn’t seem to add much, but the season is still very young. For now, it’s enough to celebrate a hard-earned victory over a rival. Register for a user account and get: New improved notification system! Fewer adsCreate community postsComment on articles, community postsReceive comments, community posts
