FC Bayern women’s team secure first win against Essen

At the same time as last years champion VfL Wolfsburg (vs. Hoffenheim 6:0), FC Bayern’s women had the honour to kick off the season in Essen. Their last game of the previous season had been at the home ground of SGS Essen as well. In this game Vivianne Miedema (transferred to Arsenal) secured the second place in the table with two late goals, which also granted the eligibility to play in the Champions League.

3 things we noticed:

1. New strikers starting to get hot

“Who will score all the goals next season?” was a reasonable question after the transfer of Miedema to Arsenal became public. Unfortunately the dependence on her kept on growing more and more over the past few years.

In the third part of our women’s season breakdown we pointed out that it would be key to find different scorers in the upcoming season.

Apparently this has worked out quite well. Victories with more than a one goal difference had become a rare occasion for the reds. This time three different scorers got on the board, two of them were new signings of the summer.

“Top players are incredible hard to find […] unless, you pay horrendous amounts of money. But this is not our way.”
Karin Danner, Manager of FC Bayern Women, ovb-online.de

This quote by Danner was made in the summer break. However regarding to the WDR they paid almost a six figured amount of money to FFC Frankfurt, to acquire Mandy Islacker, two-time top scorer of the women’s Bundesliga. This is not quite comparable to the madness at men’s football, but impressive if you consider the fact that there were no transfer fees, only a few years ago.

.@FCBfrauen won their #AFBL season opener vs. @SGSEssen 3-0. Mandy Islacker opened the scoring, @FridolinaRolfo with a nice assist. pic.twitter.com/4S1Lf7cI6J

— Patrick (@RatedRHero) 3. September 2017

.@lu_vonkova with the 2-0 for @FCBfrauen around the hour mark. A one-two with @SimoneLaudehr to set it up. pic.twitter.com/qDDcDwZYxy

— Patrick (@RatedRHero) 3. September 2017

10 minutes later, @SimoneLaudehr converted a penalty for the 3-0 final score. @FCBfrauen pic.twitter.com/r0vij9IIi6

— Patrick (@RatedRHero) 3. September 2017

2. The 4-2-3-1 of SGS – no challenge whatsoever

FC Bayern women played with their usual three at the back formation. The departures of Holstad, Abbé and the injury of Viktoria Schnaderbeck had no influence on that.

Both wingbacks were offensively active but also tracked back when defensive work was demanded. Right now the coach of Essen, Kraus, might be in doubt of his decision to play 4-3-2-1 in both directions of the pitch.

Essen tried to pressure high up the field. However the only 17-year-old striker, Nicole Anyomi, was quite lost against the 3 centre-backs of FC Bayern. They also made use of goalkeeper Tinja-Riikka Korpela to outplay the midfield, coming towards them. When Essen’s defence also started to move up the field, there were too many opportunities to play deep passes behind the backline, which unfortunately caused Islacker to appear offside from time to time. Essen’s best approach was over the midfield were they shifted collectively to isolate one Bayern player at the side-line. Luckily those turnovers were in harmless situation, so that FC Bayern managed to reorganize quite quickly.

In terms of their build-up play, the host never managed to outnumber FC Bayern close to the ball. The two strikers of the reds had to deal with two wide centre-backs, and one defensive midfielder. At first it was Ina Lehmann tracking back between the two centre-backs, but that changed up the second half were a rotation with her companion Manjou Wilde was initiated. Däbritz and Rolfö needed some time to adapt to the change.

Essen sometimes appeared to be dangerous via counters over their right wing. However some shots from distance and some freekicks of Linda Dallmann were the only noteworthy situations.

3. Simone Laudehr – far on the wing but still a centrepiece

Just like Essen, FC Bayern also dominated over their right wing. Laudehr was the key in this matter. Without the ball, she stuck to the side-line, to create width for her teammates. In possession she was everywhere. Many times she outplayed her opponent in one-on-one situations, before crossing into the box but she also used diagonal dribbling to appear the centre/the half spaces where she could interact with Rolfö, Däbritz or Voňková. Laudehr’s attacking spirit caused Wennieger to act very offesively orientated as well.

Because of her, Essen needed to switch up their team after just half an hour into the game. Sarah Freutel needed to move from her actual position on the right over to the left. Some oft he other changes during the game were also made only to keep Laudehr under control. On this day she simply was to good together with her teammates.

With all the focus on the right side of FC Bayern, Leupholz had enough time to get the offence going over the middle. Near the end oft he game, Essen’s coach Kraus, made Dallmann play as a second striker, with no effect on the new backline of FC Bayern. The positioning and passing of Kristin Demann looks promising, so that she may be the successor of Nora Holstad.

Not everything went perfectly for FC Bayern women as they showed some flaws over the whole of 90 minutes. However, with a 3:0 victory and many promising approaches, it was a good start into the season. The first home game takes place on the upcoming weekend against SC Freiburg (4th place last season).

SGS Essen – FC Bayern München
Essen	Weiß – Hochstein (46′ Hegering), Ioannidou, Ostermeier, Klasen – Wilde, Lehmann – Knaak (55′ Schüller), Dallmann, Freutel – Anyomi (78′ Feldkamp)
Bench	Strüngmann, Dzaltur, Radke
Bayern	Korpela – Faißt, Demann, Wenninger – Lewandowski, Däbritz, Leupolz (62′ Škorvánková), Rolfö, Laudehr – Islacker (73′ Rolser), Voňková (80′ Roord)
Bench	Zinsberger, Maier, Wieder, Beerensteyn
Goals	0-1 Islacker (36′), 0-2 Voňková (61′), 0-3 Laudehr (73′ Penalty)
Cards	Klasen (82′) / Islacker (44′)
Referees	Marina Wozniak (Herne), Irina Stremel (Barnten), Vanessa Arlt (Greven), Kathrin Heimann (Gladbeck)
Crowd	2,132