Every league needs its flagship, its clásico, Classique or derby. An event which rouses the senses regardless of current form or fortune. Bayern Munich appeared ready for the moment and Borussia Dortmund perhaps less so. Despite itself, Der Klassiker eventually sparked into life – and we were left with a sense of what could have been.
The cliche describes a game of two halves; this was more like a game of one half. We had 45 minutes of an attack-v-defence training session, followed by the real match, the one that we came for. By then, perhaps, it was a little too late for the blue touchpaper to be lit. We were more in the realm of sparklers than catherine wheels.
By the end Harry Kane, having opened the scoring in that breeze of a first half with a breeze of a goal, nodding in simply from Joshua Kimmich’s corner, was playing like a midfield general, box to box, scrapping in front of his own defence as much as he attacked (and there was time for that latter clause too, as he expertly slipped in Luis Díaz on the flank to create a curious, ultimately decisive second goal for Michael Olise).
This was virtuoso Kane, no longer the simultaneous No 9 and No 10 that has so conquered Germany in the last two-and-a-bit years but an all-round maestro, “a 6, an 8 and a 10,” as he described his match to Archie Rhind-Tutt on the touchline afterwards. If we must be so vulgar as to describe the England captain’s excellence by numbers, he had already weighed in from a statistical perspective by heading the first-half opener. Debate raged on German television as to whether Kane had committed a foul, with Lothar Matthäus claiming that the striker’s gentle nudge on Serhou Guirassy at the front post was “a clear foul”. There were no protests from the visitors, and maybe that was part of the problem.
BVB’s first half xG was 0.00. Even for the cynics who can live without xG as a concept, there is little arguing with a statistic that unequivocal. Despite being infamous for a string of capitulations at the Allianz Arena in recent years, Dortmund had not lost on their last two visits here, a win and a draw. Kane had not scored against them in three games since knocking a hat-trick past them in his first Klassiker, back in November 2023. Yet this, facing Bayern’s customary intensity in the Vincent Kompany era, was a constant retreat, as even Niko Kovac recognised while he was complaining about referee Bastian Dankert after the game. “My first half wasn’t good,” he confessed, “but his entire game wasn’t good.”
There was much to marvel at from a Bayern perspective as they forced the visitors back. Díaz and Kane shone. Olise put his disappointingly ordinary showings with France in the international window firmly behind him. At right-back Sacha Boey looked like the player Bayern thought they were buying for more than €30m in January 2024, before injuries stymied him. But this was a recital rather than an exchange of qualities.

Having played a half in which they could and should have been “three or four up” as Kane put it, Bayern weren’t and Dortmund awoke after the break at only 1-0 down. They were chances, for Felix Nmecha, for Guirassy and for Karim Adeyemi, the latter slipping as he looked primed to equalise, ballooning his shot high and wide of Manuel Neuer’s goal. The decisive slip, though, was still to come.
Jobe Bellingham had been sent on for the final 17 minutes of normal time as Kovac aimed to force Dortmund’s way back in with fresher legs, on a day in which Bayern’s bench looked light given their injuries (something which Kane foresaw in pre-season, in fact). Then the youngster had his rabbit in the headlights moment – sent by Kane, Díaz crossed, it went past Dortmund goalkeeper Gregor Kobel to Bellingham, stumbling on his own goalline. He appeared to recover his footing but in aiming to clear could only fire the ball as far as Olise’s challenge, with the ball ending up in the back of the net. It was a horrible moment for the Englishman and, given the pressure on him as he follows in brother Jude’s footsteps, always destined to be angled as his difficulty in adapting to elite level life in microcosm, the big moment that he wasn’t quite ready for.

This is unfair. It could have happened to anyone – Kovac emphasised he saw “no fault on Jobe’s part” and Kane talked of his tricky start in the Bundesliga as “part of the learning process at this level”. Bellingham the younger is not yet expected to be a game-changer for BVB and nor should he be. Kovac is not known as the world’s keenest developer of young players but his no-nonsense demeanour could actually work in Jobe’s favour. There will be no special treatment – just demand and reward for full effort. The athletic levels the coach expects are attainable and the rest will come.
This could be a mantra for this Dortmund team as a whole. After years of confused transfer policy, of underachieving big money signings, scrambling for the Champions League and the route there not mattering too much, Kovac has a map, even if the journey is not the one which one might have typically associated with Dortmund. Bayern’s road is different, with this seventh win out of seven in the Bundesliga (and 11th from 11 in all competitions) underlining they are on another level. This is not yet BVB’s level. There were little hints in the second half that they are gaining the discipline to aim towards it, though. Then, maybe, we can get a whole Klassiker and not a half.
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Bundesliga results
ShowUnion Berlin 3-1 Borussia M'gladbach, RB Leipzig 2-1 Hamburger SV, FC Cologne 1-1 Augsburg, FC Heidenheim 2-2 Werder Bremen, Wolfsburg 0-3 VfB Stuttgart, Mainz 3-4 Bayer Leverkusen, Bayern Munich 2-1 Borussia Dortmund, Freiburg 2-2 Eintracht Frankfurt, St. Pauli 0-3 Hoffenheim
Talking points
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Leipzig needed to take advantage of probable dropped Dortmund points and take advantage they did, intermittently dazzling with a Christoph Baumgartner brace and then finding the resolve to hang on for a win against a better than expected so far Hamburg. There was also a heartwarming reception and choreo for the returning Yussuf Poulsen, now with HSV after 12 years in Lower Saxony (to put that into perspective, RB Leipzig were four years old when he joined). He will be back as well, post-playing career, with CEO Oliver Mintzlaff telling the Dane “the door is wide open for you here”.
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Leverkusen’s role in this season is becoming clearer; they’ll take a while finding their new selves and will entertain us greatly in the meantime, as they did in the way harder than it needed to be 4-3 win at Mainz. Kasper Hjulmand is wisely leaning on experience while things settle down, with Álex Grimaldo scoring twice and the restored Jonas Hofmann weighing in usefully.

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Despite appointing a new sporting director in the experienced Rouven Schröder, the Borussia Mönchengladbach crisis continues. They are still winless after Friday night’s 3-1 loss at Union Berlin, where they were two down inside 26 minutes. “You can’t afford a start like that at Bundesliga level,” lamented Schröder, whose next decision will be whether to keep on interim coach Eugen Polanski. Little will be gleaned from the meeting with Bayern next up so a Pokal meeting with Karlsruhe and league matches with St Pauli and rivals Köln could decide his fate.