Kompany's Bayern make case for defence

Racking up four successive clean sheets across all competitions since a 4-1 blip at Barcelona in the UEFA Champions League proves that Kompany's men were keen to learn from a stinging experience in the Catalan capital.

Sure enough, the Bavarians subsequently got down to business at the training ground and ironed out some creases that resulted in shutouts against Bochum, Mainz, Union Berlin and Benfica. With a visit to an St. Pauli side who have yet to score at home in the Bundesliga this season next up for Der Rekordmeister, there is every chance the division leaders could extend their impressive defensive run.

“It’s not like it’s just the back four working for it, but the whole team works against the ball," Joshua Kimmich explained, in quotes appearing on Bayern's official website. "At the end of the day, that brings us clean sheets but also dominance with the ball. You can see everyone’s working together, that everyone’s hungry to defend our goal."

The stats back up the 29-year-old's words. Bayern have broken new ground by only allowing 49 shots on their goal in the first nine games this Bundesliga season, the lowest total of any team since data began being recorded back in 1993/94. Their current run of games without conceding, meanwhile, was last seen at the club back in 2019/20, the famous treble-winning season.  

“We never said that we don’t learn from mistakes that happened or from the games we’ve played," board member for sport Max Eberl added on fcbayern.com. "Obviously we look at it all; [the coach] and his backroom staff do so very intensively." 

Watch: Bayern down Union while making it three Bundesliga clean sheets in a row on Matchday 9

That studious approach has seen FCB decrease the amount of big chances afforded to opposition teams from eight across the first six matchdays to just one in the last three. The side's xGoals concession rate has also dropped from 5.2 (0.87 per game) to just 1.0 (0.3 per game) over the same period.

Much has been made of Bayern's goalscoring exploits this term, and with the team on the road on Matchday 10 they have a chance to break another record. In all five away appearances this season, Kompany's side have netted at least three goals; a sixth straight away game scoring at least three times would represent a new best in the Bundesliga. 

Watch: Bayern's Manuel Neuer outlines Vincent Kompany's approach at the start of the season

Yet as much credit as the team's forwards deserve, the defenders, too, have rightly come in for praise as their confidence and understanding of the coach's instructions grow and their respective performances continue to improve. To flourish up front, Bayern need solidity at the back, and they have worked on a previous susceptibility to counter-attacks while looking to form a tighter unit all the while. 

Dayot Upamecano and Minjae Kim have been ever-present in Kompany's central-defensive set-up in the Bundesliga this season, and although both took a little time to find their feet together in 2024/25, things are working out better for the pair as each game passes.

“It's quite something that they're defending with such a huge space behind them," Kimmich explained. "Obviously we always try to support them, but it really helps us that both have great speed, that both are very strong in challenges. Both are making really clever decisions in their duels with opponents, and that really helps us with confidence."

In Kompany's tighter approach, the average distance between players has dropped to 21.5 metres in the last two Bundesliga games from 22.4 metres in the first six.

After the 1-0 victory over Benfica in midweek, Upamecano said, "Everyone wants to keep a clean sheet together, everyone wants to win together. This is how we have to keep going." The France international won six out of 10 tackles during the victory against the Portuguese side and boasted a 97 percent successful pass rate. Kim fared even better, with a 100 percent pass rate and winning 78 percent of his duels.

“I’ve always seen him as a monster in challenges but he’s also made progress with the ball at his feet," Kimmich said of the Korean. "You can see that he understands the coach’s ideas and wants to implement them.”

St. Pauli's Millerntor has generally been a happy hunting ground for Bayern in the past and the Bavarians' defensive goal in Hamburg on Saturday will be to make it four consecutive Bundesliga games without concession for the first time since 2018, a feat neither Julian Nagelsmann or Thomas Tuchel managed before Kompany's arrival at the helm.