Round-Up: Reinhold Mathy

In 1979 the 17 year old Reinhold Mathy joined the youth team of Bayern Munich. He previously received his football ABC at FC Memmingen, from where 3 years later Frank Wiblishauser also moved to Munich. Since the 1980/81 season Mathy was part of the senior team and made his debut on October 18th. He was subbed in at the 83th minute in a 3:1 win against VfL Bochum. Six months later, the striker put his name on the scoresheet for the first time as he scored the final 5:1 in a win against MSV Duisburg. At the end of his first pro season he thus had his share in winning the league. He later won three more league title with Bayern.

Reinhold Mathy was also very successful with Bayern in the cup competitions. In his second pro season (1981/82) he won the DFB cup, which he kept winning every two years (1984 & 1986) with Bayern. In 15 DFB cup games, he scored five goals. His greatest achievements and probably his greatest defeats of his career were the lost finals in the European Cup of Champions. In this competition he found the back of the net six times in 14 games. He scored three of these goals in a 4:2 win against FK Austria Wien in 1985 and two more goals 1986 in a 2:0 victory against the Dutch champions PSV Eindhoven. In the 1982 final against Aston Villa the then 20-year-old Mathy was part of the starting XI alongside Klaus Augenthaler, Paul Breitner and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. In the 52nd minute he was substituted and thus could not stop the match-winning 1:0 by Peter Withe in the 67th minute. In the final in 1987 against Porto he sat on the bench for 90 minutes and had to watch as the team featuring Hansi Flick, Andreas Brehme, Lothar Matthäus and Michael Rummenigge wasted a 1:0 (Kögl, 25.) by conceding late goals from Madjer (77.) and Filho (80.).

Funfact: Dieter Hoeneß was the only Bayern player who played in both finals in ’82 and ’87.

Between 1980 and 1987 Mathy played 100 games for Bayern and scored 21 goals, too few to really break through. So he moved to the Bundesliga rivals Bayer 05 Uerdingen in 1987 and was able to score 13 goals in 78 games during three seasons – not enough for a striker. After a short stay in Switzerland at FC Wettingen, Mathy tried it again in the German second divison for Hannover 96 in 1992. But due to numerous injuries his career ended in 1993 after only eleven games and no goals for Hannover.

We congratulate Reinhold Mathy to his 54th birthday!

On a weekly schedule, miasanrot.com provides a 2-for-1 information combo meal. It contains a link list to (hopefully) worthwhile texts about the red giant. Each round-up is dedicated to a former Bayern player who is celebrating his birthday in that week.

Press review

Champions League

How close the two legs against SL Benfica were are also plain to see in the xG maps.

Nevertheless Bayern went through to the seminfinals, for the fifth straight year in a row and for the sixth time in the last seven years. Impressive numbers for the club. Pep Guardiola’s CL track record is even more astounding. He went to the CL semifinals in each of his seven seasons as a professional coach (Ancelotti needed 20 seasons, Ferguson 39).

Among the best four teams in Europe are the “usual suspects”. At least two of the trio Barca, Real and Bayern were in each of the last 7 CL semifinals.

Since Christiano Ronaldo has scored a hat-trick against Wolfsburg and is one potential opponent in the semifinals it might be interesting to compare his CL track record to the two Bayern goal scorers against SL Benfica. Thomas Müller has found the back of the net 36 times in 78 games. Ronaldo had the exact same numbers. It took Arturo Vidal 36 games to score 11 goals. Christiano needed 40.

Opinions vs. Stats

The criticism by Giovanni Trappatoni about the playing style of Guardiola was answered by Thom Lawrence in his analysis about the “time to shoot”. In this CL season Bayern’s average number of seconds between a pass and a shot was 148 seconds. This is the thrid lowest average, only topped by Real Madrid and Bayer Leverkusen.

In an article for the Red Bulletin Raphael Honigstein assesss the impact of data analytics on modern day football clubs. He also quotes Michael Reschke concerning the boundaries of completely data driven decision making:

Statistics can at best round off impressions. A lot of the statistical data is unclear.

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