Bayern Munich head coach Hansi Flick on Wednesday was “shocked” as the holders crashed out of the DFB Pokal after defeat at second-division Holstein Kiel, who won a nail-biting penalty shoot-out 6-5, as the second round tie finished 2-2 after extra-time.
“It’s a shock. We are enormously disappointed,” Flick told Sky.
“It’s all the more annoying that we conceded an equalizer, which made it 2-2 in the last second [of normal time]. Congratulations to Kiel,” he said. “We have to put it behind us and do things better.”
Photo: AFP
Bayern forward Thomas Mueller said the defeat was “brutal.”
It was the first time Bayern had been knocked out of the cup by a non-Bundesliga club since losing to then fourth-tier Magdeburg in 2000-2001.
After Bayern midfielder Marc Roca was the first player to miss with his team’s sixth penalty, Kiel’s Fin Bartels converted the winning spot-kick to spark wild celebrations.
The upset means it was the first time European champions Bayern had been eliminated from a cup competition since Flick took charge in November 2019.
Bayern were up 2-1 thanks to goals by Serge Gnabry and Leroy Sane, either side of a superb Bartels strike, before a last-gasp header by Kiel captain Hauke Wahl on 95 minutes took the game to extra-time, then penalties.
“Even if it sounds stupid after a cup defeat against an underdog from Kiel — luck wasn’t on our side,” Mueller said.
“It’s certainly not FC Bayern’s best phase,” he added after the European champions also crashed to a 3-2 league defeat at Borussia Moenchengladbach on Friday last week.
“Being knocked out is brutal, we have to let that sink in first,” he said.
The German FA gave Bayern permission to postpone the cup tie from late last month. Bayern fielded a near-full strength side with only top-scoring striker Robert Lewandowski, who made a second-half cameo, and centerback Jerome Boateng started on the bench.
Lewandowski’s stand-in Gnabry gave Bayern the lead after only 14 minutes.
When Kiel goalkeeper Ioannis Gelios parried a Thomas Mueller header, it fell straight to the feet of Germany winger Gnabry who tapped into an empty net.
Having started this year top of the second division after five straight wins, Kiel caused nervous looks in Bayern’s ranks when Bartels, 33, put them level.
The former Werder Bremen veteran sprinted onto a long ball, avoided the challenge of Bayern defender Bouna Sarr and fired past Manuel Neuer eight minutes from halftime.
However, Sane restored the lead just three minutes after the break.
Sane expertly curled his free-kick over the Kiel wall and out of reach of Gelios’ glove.
As heavy snow started to fall, Kiel kept plugging away and were rewarded with the equalizer five minutes into stoppage-time.
Sloppy defending at a corner left Wahl free in the area and the centerback flicked his header into the far corner of the Bayern net to force extra-time.
The European champions laid siege to the Kiel goal in a bid to avoid penalties, but Gelios pulled off a string of saves.
In the final 16, Kiel are set to host fellow second-division side SV Darmstadt 98 on Feb. 2.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen, who beat Eintracht Frankfurt 4-1 on Tuesday in their postponed second-round tie, are at Rot-Weiss Essen, the only fourth-tier club left in the competition.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier