In a condensed season in German football with games coming thick and fast, the DFL managed to squeeze in the Super Cup final into a packed schedule, albeit on a Wednesday night between game weeks. Helpfully, to provide some normality to the game, it was contested between familiar foes in Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, and after a disappointing weekend of results for both sides in the Bundesliga, this game gave an opportunity to get back on track with some silverware. The clashes between the two sides in recent games have been remarkably close affairs, and this game was no different, with Bayern Munich able to claim a 3-2 win after Borussia Dortmund had staged a comeback. This tactical analysis will examine how Bayern Munich were able to claim this victory through adapting and learning from previous encounters, as well as how Dortmund were able to challenge Bayern are stage a comeback.
Lineups
With this Super Cup being a midweek fixture, both sides were forced to rotate in some degree, with Bayerns team containing the most changes in both formation and personnel. As I will detail within this analysis, rather than playing their usual 4-2-3-1, Bayern went with a 4-3-3 with Javi Martínez as a holding midfielder while Corentin Tolisso and Joshua Kimmich played ahead of him. Borussia Dortmund meanwhile used their usual 3-4-3 shape, with the half-space occupying duo of Julian Brandt and Marco Reus sitting behind Erling Braut Haaland.
Bayerns 4-3-3 pressing
The most logical starting point for this analysis is looking at why Bayern opted to scrap their favoured and massively successful 4-2-3-1 pressing structure in favour of a 4-3-3, and the answer to this actually lies in Bayerns previous game against Dortmund. As Ive mentioned extensively in previous Bayern analyses, the main weakness of their 4-2-3-1 press is the ability to overload their two central midfielders. In their most recent game last season, Dortmund utilised this tactic often, and Julian Brandt would often drop onto one of the Bayern midfielders to attempt to create a 3v2 in the midfield, or a 2v1 on a specific central midfielder. Here we see below Dortmund have dropped to form that midfield three, with Kimmich closest to Brandt. Kimmich can’t jump to press the deepest midfielder Dahoud, or he leaves a large lane open for Brandt Likewise, if Kimmich stays with Brandt, Dahouds space is increased and he can play under little pressure. Therefore it makes Dortmund difficult to press due to Bayerns midfielders having these decisional crises and instead makes Bayern rely on adjustments and reactions to certain situations.
We can see another example here of an overload, where a 2v1 is created on Joshua Kimmich, with one player moving towards the ball while another moves further away. Whichever decision Kimmich makes, he will always benefit one of the Dortmund players, and so it is difficult situation to be put in. Dortmund had good success in this game regarding building through this press, and Hansi Flick likely wanted to fix this.
So to prevent one of the Dortmund forwards d
