David Raum did not mince his words.
“It was a catastrophe, the worst-case scenario,” said the RB Leipzig captain after a 6-0 defeat to Bayern Munich on the opening day of the season. “Just blow after blow.”
On a night that set the tone for Bayern’s record-breaking Bundesliga season, three of those blows were struck by England captain Harry Kane, with Michael Olise scoring a first-half brace, either side of a debut goal for Luis Díaz. Since then, the trio hasn’t stopped scoring.
It was the most unfavorable start for Ole Werner, who was in charge of his first league match as Leipzig’s head coach. “It was a disastrous performance,” said Werner, who then lamented his side’s lack of cohesion and defensive naivety. “We have a lot of work ahead of us.”
How RB Leipzig bounced back from a mauling at Bayern Munich
But a measure of a team’s courage – and a manager’s ingenuity – is its ability to come back from a good hiding place. In five months, things will look very different for Leipzig. Werner’s side are third in the Bundesliga and have lost just two league games since the early-season battle at the Allianz Arena. Both defeats came last month when injuries bit deep and Ivory Coast’s influential striker Yan Diomande was absent from the Africa Cup of Nations. Now that these players are back in the ranks, expectations are growing about what Werner’s young team could achieve.
But now comes the hard part. Bayern travel to the Red Bull Arena at teatime on Saturday with an eleven-point lead in the title race (if that’s not a misnomer at this point). In a bid to build on the best start to a German top-flight season in history, Bayern will be boosted by the return of playmaker Jamal Musiala, who will make his first appearance in the matchday squad since breaking a leg at the Club World Cup last summer.
It would be a frightening prospect for any team, let alone one that was hit six times last time out. Raum is up to the scale of the challenge, but the German left-back believes things could be different this time.
David Raum: ‘Bayern may be the best team in the world’
“It will be a tough match,” Raum acknowledged. “In my opinion, Bayern are perhaps the best team in the world right now.
“They killed us at the start of the season, but this will be a very different game because we have some new players and we play in a different way than at the start of the season.
“The coach has a better feeling for us and the way we play, and we have a better feeling for what he wants from us. If we play at home with our fans, we might hurt them a little bit.”
If they want to do that, Raum will have to win his individual battle against Olise. It is something that few have achieved during this period. In Bayern’s seventeen league matches this season, the France international has scored or assisted against a dozen different opponents. Raum is determined that Leipzig will not be the unlucky 13th.
Raum: ‘There is no key to stop Michael Olise’
“There is no key to stop him,” the defender said of Olise. “He will have his moments. I will try to block his left foot. But whatever I say, it is not easy to stop a player like him. He is on a great way.”
“I’m looking forward to playing against him because I like playing against the best wingers in the world and he is definitely one of them at the moment. I will try to be sharp, stay close to him and be present in the matches.”
While individual duels are one thing, the bigger battle is already lost. Raum acknowledges that, with a 15-point gap to overcome, a title challenge is almost certainly beyond Leipzig. However, that is not the priority.
“I think Bayern will become champions, but that is not our main goal,” said Raum. “We want to play in the Champions League next year and at the moment it looks very good. We have one more match to go, so if we win this one it looks very, very good.”
For Raum and his teammates, exacting revenge for the opening night catastrophe would be a good start.
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