Stand: December 4, 2024, 5:27 p.m
Von: Jakob Böllhoff
PressSplit
867. Professional game, first dismissal. Bayern and their goalkeeper now have to ask themselves whether this red card is a coincidence or a symptom of a problem. A comment.
Frankfurt am Main – Manuel Neuer looked slightly overwhelmed. Red card, expulsion – what do you have to do? Do you even have to do anything? Is it possible that a large gripping arm, controlled from the Cologne cellar, comes out of the sky to transport you off the pitch? Or does the referee put a penitential hat on you and escort you to the next corner where you can be properly shamed?
Manuel Neuer, the goalkeeper legend of FC Bayern Munich, seemed to be playing for time when he was sent off in the cup game against Leverkusen on Tuesday evening after his Rambo action against Jeremie Frimpong. He stood around for a bit, made a half-hearted complaint to referee Harm Osmers, before leisurely walking away. Doesn’t help. Nobody would come. Nothing would change.
Neuer apologizes: “I’m sorry”
867. Professional game, first dismissal. So if he had experienced that too. Neuer later appeared relatively (relative to himself) meekly in the mixed zone. “I’m sorry,” he said, but he didn’t mean it in the direction of Frimpong, who he had run over minibus-style, but in the direction of his team-mates, who he had, if you will, let down.
Neuer did not express the absurd accusation against the nimble Dutchman that he had previously made in the TV interview – “he runs into me and tries to accept it gratefully” – a second time. Fortunately. Everything was unpleasant enough as it was.
Newer isn’t getting any younger
Bayern and their goalkeeper now have to ask themselves whether this red card is a coincidence or a symptom of a problem. It fits perfectly with coach Vincent Kompany’s risky style of play that behind his high defense he has a keeper who will go down in football history as “Manu, the libero”. What’s not so practical is that this keeper is closer to history than to the future. Neuer will be 39 years old at the end of March. That doesn’t mean anything for a goalkeeper. But it doesn’t have to mean nothing.
So as always: the truth is on the pitch. There, where Neuer got lost during one of his iconic trips into the open field in the Champions League game in Birmingham and thus caused the defeat. Where he crashed into poor Frimpong against Leverkusen, threatening to shatter him into a thousand pieces. Too late, just a moment. But in football, one moment can mean a whole world.
Manuel Neuer’s contract expires in the summer of 2025. FC Bayern knows what to do.
