Lahm taking the positives
Leverkusen - FC Bayern München’s 1-1 draw with Bayer 04 Leverkusen on Saturday may have been tinged with a hint of regret at dropping two points, yet captain Philipp Lahm still reflected on "a good week for the club" afterwards.
Pep Guardiola's charges put themselves top of the Bundesliga table for the first time this season with a performance that was arguably just as good as the 3-1 humbling they dealt Manchester City FC in the UEFA Champions League four days earlier.
Speaking to bundesliga.com after the game, the 29-year-old admitted the team had not been clinical enough in front of goal, but praised his team-mates in equal measure for a display in which they kept a quality Leverkusen side pinned back in their own half for long spells.
bundesliga.com: Philipp Lahm, your team-mates seem to be very pleased with the side's performance but not with the result. What is your opinion?
Philipp Lahm: I think they've summed it up pretty well there.
bundesliga.com: What was your biggest problem against Leverkusen?
Lahm: Getting the ball over the line.
bundesliga.com: Your performance was very impressive. Were you yourself surprised that between Bayern and Leverkusen, in first and third in the table respectively, there seemed to be such a gulf in quality?
Lahm: We look at our performance and it shows us that we can play good football and dominate games. We created lots of chances and didn’t give much away at the back. But those are games you have to win.
bundesliga.com: Despite the result, Bayern are now top of the league for the first time this season. Do you now go into the international break with a good feeling?
Lahm: It’s always nice to be top of the league. Two weeks ago we were two points behind Dortmund, now we’re above them. But the important thing is to be there at the end of the season.
bundesliga.com: In the last four encounters against Leverkusen, you have won just once. Are they something of a bogey team for you?
Lahm: As I said: you need to make sure the ball crosses the line, and we didn’t do that enough today.
bundesliga.com: That has happened before this season, in the last game, a 1-0 win over VfL Wolfsburg, for example. Is that the one of the team’s shortcomings this season, or is it simply different from game to game?
Lahm: It’s different from game to game. There have been games where we’ve won easily this season. In midweek we scored three goals away at Manchester City, so we can do it on our day. Today things didn’t quite work out as we had planned. We conceded the equaliser too soon after going ahead, there’s no doubt about that. We need to analyse their goal, but all in all we hardly gave anything away. we just didn’t manage to re-take the lead in the crucial phases of the game. That was our shortcoming.
bundesliga.com: What is your assessment of the week in total?
Lahm: It’s positive. Obviously we’d like to have taken three points in Leverkusen as well, especially since we knew that [Borussia] Dortmund had lost their game. We wanted to win and that’s how the team played, right to the end, but we have to be satisfied with a point. All in all it’s been a very good week for us, first beating Wolfsburg, then taking a big step in the Champions League and now putting in a very good performance here. We were able to build on what we showed against Manchester City, even if we only got one point instead of three.
Interview by Tobias Gonscherowski
How Bayern could have done with former player and goalscoring machine Jürgen Klinsmann, five of whose best Bayern goals you can see right here, courtesy of the Bundesliga's official YouTube channel:
