New faces, new names, new season but some Bundesliga things never change

Sometimes less is more. “I think in recent years he would have done another jink and another, after the two stepovers,” reflected Nuri Sahin. “This moment describes his development. No frills, stepovers, just straight into the box.”

In his decisive half-hour cameo for Borussia Dortmund on the season’s opening day, Jamie Gittens showed that he is following his new coach’s instructions to the letter.

That’s right, the name is truncated too. It’s now Gittens on the back of the shirt rather than Bynoe-Gittens. After a summer discussion with his father, Jamie decided it would simply be “easier to pronounce” and Sahin feels at the dawn of the new era his game is becoming leaner, less florid, more effective. The two goals Gittens scored as a substitute to beat Eintracht Frankfurt in the match’s final quarter were an exercise in high-end efficiency and a full, firm declaration of a talent that has often felt within touching distance since the England under-21 winger arrived from Manchester City in 2020. It has often been just out of reach.

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Yet whereas Gittens’ explosive entrance will be what this game is remembered for, fate was a whisker from pointing Sahin and company towards an early, early-season inquest. There were just 46 seconds between Fares Chaïbi inexplicably scooping over an open goal for the visitors and Gittens breaking the deadlock, cutting inside Rasmus Christensen before ripping an irresistible shot into the top of the net. BVB, chasing a more high-tempo, possession-dominant identity under their new coach, had over 70% of the ball but could have easily ended up with nothing.

With champions Bayer Leverkusen winning in ominous style at Borussia Mönchengladbach on Friday night – Florian Wirtz’s stoppage-time winner was the 17th time they have scored in the 88th minute or later in this calendar year - it was up to the challengers to respond. And they both did, but not without a significant degree of difficulty. Leverkusen haven’t changed. Bayern and Dortmund both need to.

It was about a matter of seconds on Sunday afternoon too, when Bayern Munich kicked off their campaign at Wolfsburg. The first 45 minutes of the Vincent Kompany reign had gone perfectly to plan, as you would expect at one of Bayern’s happiest hunting grounds. Jamal Musiala had given them a lead from – pleasingly – a surging right-sided service from the returning Sacha Boey, after the serious hamstring tear which sidelined the French full-back within weeks of his arrival. Yet however elegant the drinks service is, there is always some spilt cognac or a smashed champagne flute just around the corner at Bayern, as Kompany is quickly discovering.

Barely 15 seconds after the restart for the second half, Tiago Tomas strode through after a Wolfsburg press won the ball, and Boey pushed the forward over for a penalty. Lovro Majer converted with comfort and eight minutes later and the Croatia midfielder was filling his boots again, steering in after Patrick Wimmer had hustled the ball from the dawdling Kim Min-Jae. In the week that Manuel Neuer announced his retirement from international football, this reminded that the goalkeeping legend probably has a few more years of rescue acts in the tank for his club.

Another veteran was ready to rescue Bayern from a burning building here. If BVB relied on a young star to rush in and save the day, Kompany had help from the other end of the scale. Thomas Müller entered the field in the 65th minute with his team punch drunk and trailing. They stayed neither for long. Müller had an instant impact in his 709th game for the club – matching Sepp Maier’s club record -, pressuring Jakub Kaminski into an own goal within seconds and then brilliantly winning the ball from Cedric Zesiger before transferring it to Harry Kane, who duly laid on Serge Gnabry’s winner.

It was dizzying stuff. Have we been looking at Kompany’s appointment the wrong way around. Rather than fretting if he really was the right man to bring some stability to a ship on choppy waters of late, maybe we could concede he is the perfect choice to help Bayern simply lean into the chaos? “We could have easily lost or drawn,” confessed the new boss with disarming candour, before talking about the “mentality” that had won his team the game; it was the same word he had used to describe Müller’s intervention.

Like Sahin, there are any number of inherited faultlines in his evolving squad that are simply out of his control. Kompany might not be the right man to sort out the defence, they say. How could he be with Kim and Dayot Upamecano this erratic? Letting Matthijs de Ligt go might have been a financial necessity but he might have come in useful. Maybe burying one’s head in the sand is the natural reaction. “I don’t want to talk about Min-Jae’s mistake,” insisted Kompany to Sky after the game. “I want to talk about the reaction, from everyone.”

Dortmund’s goalkeeper Gregor Kobel had been in a similar space when defining his own team’s start the night before, describing “not a top, top performance, but a very good one.” These two Bundesliga giants eventually reach the form they will need to vanish the incumbent champions. For now, enterprise and a generous dose of desperation will suffice to keep them in the picture – and it looks like it will entertain us, too.

Borussia Monchengladbach 2-3 Bayer Leverkusen, Augsburg 2-2 Werder Bremen, Freiburg 3-1 Stuttgart, Hoffenheim 3-2 Holstein Kehl, Mainz 1-1 Union Berlin, RB Leipzig 1-0 Bochum, Borussia Dortmund 2-0 Eintracht Frankfurt, Wolfsburg 2-3 Bayern Munich, St Pauli 0-2 Bayer Leverkusen

Talking points

• It would be dishonest, of course, to imply that Leverkusen had everything under control in the season opener. Both unofficial team spokesmen, Robert Andrich and Granit Xhaka (the latter had struck the opening goal of the Bundesliga season with a typical rocket from range), warned that Die Werkself can’t keep dragging themselves out of these situations, even if the ever-mounting evidence suggests that actually, yes they can. Leverkusen had raced into a 2-0 first half lead before being pegged back in the latter stages, with new signing Tim Kleindienst netting a debut equaliser. “It’s difficult for me to explain why it happens,” shrugged Xabi Alonso. “It’s something we don’t train for. It’s not my fault - it’s just the mentality of the team.”
  

• Leverkusen, along with Köln and Stuttgart, are mourning the death of their former coach Christoph Daum, who passed away on Saturday at 70 after suffering from lung cancer. He won the Bundesliga with Stuttgart in 1992 as well as guiding Köln and Leverkusen to five second-place finishes.
  

• Of the other nominal contenders Leipzig scraped a win over Bochum, with Antonio Nusa drilling a winner within minutes of coming on as substitute but 2023/24 runners-up Stuttgart crashed to defeat at Freiburg despite their new boy Ermedin Demirović scoring in the opening minutes.
  

• A bit of reliability was on hand in Hoffenheim, even if the home side struggled to finish off promoted Holstein Kiel in the latter’s maiden top-flight outing. An Andrej Kramarić hat-trick did the job for Pellegrino Matarazzo and his men, with the Croatian forward as bankable as ever. Having already notched a treble against Köln on the first day of 20/21 Kramarić became only the third player in league history to score two opening day hat-tricks, along with Gerd Müller and Klaus Fischer.