Kane and Bayern effectively end Dortmund’s season in cracking classics | Bundesliga

It is not and will not be about the individual records. At least that is what Vincent Kompany has said on more than one occasion and will continue to say, despite Der Klassiker delivering the decisive blow in what was never really a Bundesliga title race on the final day of February. However, in the context of the league campaign, outside the bubble of what was a satisfying spectacle in a standalone sense, there may be little more to say.

Much as Kompany insisted that “prizes are awarded at the end of a season, not in February”, none of the 80,000 fans in Signal Iduna Park or those beyond needed any telling what this all meant. Joshua Kimmich’s beautifully taken late winner, snuffing out a late Borussia Dortmund comeback, gave Bayern Munich a 3-2 victory in an oscillating thriller and extended their lead at the top to 11 points, with 10 games to go. Game, set and match, even if Bayern’s CEO Jan-Christian Dreesen resisted an attempt by the presenters of Bild Sport to ply him with a glass of championship champagne on Sunday.

Kompany’s opposite number Niko Kovac talked of the early evening entertainment as being “a great advert for the league”, which it was and it wasn’t. The match itself electrified a willing home crowd, more motivated by the desire for redemption after Wednesday’s Champions League humiliation at Atalanta than any belief of a reopening of a battle for the summit. Yet what perhaps allowed this to be such an engrossing encounter might have been the removal of any genuine jeopardy before a ball was kicked. Dortmund dropping points at Leipzig in the last round of league games, extending a six-point Bayern lead at the top to eight, largely did away with the feeling that this was about contesting top spot.

It pushed and pulled pleasingly. Bayern, one could argue, were Kovaced before the break, a goal down at half-time to a Nico Schlotterbeck near-post header in 45 minutes that BVB used to smother the visitors rather than build any grand ambition. The tide was turned, however, after the break, with the inevitable Harry Kane scoring two simple goals to cap a Bayern surge, sweeping home a Serge Gnabry knockdown then dispatching another (and actually one of his less convincing attempts at a) penalty, before Kimmich settled matters with a wonderfully deft left-foot volley in the 87th minute, shortly after a surprise Daniel Svensson equaliser.

Kane, however, deserved to be the headliner, both within and without the confines of this particular game. These two goals took him to 30 for the Bundesliga season and 45 overall – still in February, for goodness’ sake – and so even if his coach is not keen to discuss it, it demands attention. As does the record that has hung in front of the England captain’s nose pretty much from the moment he arrived in Munich: Robert Lewandowski’s 41-goal Bundesliga single-season scoring record, only set five years ago when the iconic Poland striker broke a Gerd Müller mark that had always seemed unbreakable. If Kane plays every one of the remaining 10 games it would seem like a formality. However, with this lead and Champions League fish to fry, there is no guarantee Kompany will not give him a rest. Kane is arguably the one player Bayern definitely couldn’t do without for the run-in.

Not that Bayern haven’t earned the right to do that. That they had been required to dig in and essentially win the game twice in the second half made it an endearing struggle. But out of the context of the 90 minutes plus stoppage time it was just cosmetic. Turning up the heat on the champions-elect was, of course, the least BVB owed their fans after what happened against Atalanta. Going to Italy with a two-goal lead against an apparently inferior opponent should have been a controllable situation. It was not. It was instead a familiar scenario after Dortmund dug themselves a huge hole, clawed themselves out of it via a Karim Adeyemi masterpiece and then, between the usually reliable Gregor Kobel and Ramy Bensabaini, slid back into it when it was too late to recover. That, not this, had really ended their season.

“I assumed we’d make it to the next round,” sporting director Sebastian Kehl admitted. “We had budgeted for the revenue.” So Kehl and his board have moved on to plans for the future rather sooner than they had hoped. Kovac, the unanimous choice to preside over an upcoming (and needed) period of change, will stay, but much else is uncertain. Poor Emre Can, who sustained an anterior cruciate ligament injury in the first half, is out of contract in the summer. The captain’s words after Wednesday’s implosion in Bergamo had been instructive, lamenting the concession of the late penalty but conceding whether it was fairly awarded or not, his team had just made “too many mistakes”. With not an anger, but a weariness.

Regardless of what happens next with Can, the 32-year-old is not BVB’s long-term future and nor is Niklas Süle, or probably Adeyemi, Serhou Guirassy or others. As for Schlotterbeck, they hope to keep him with a bumper new contract offer – which is slated to include a release clause, which Dortmund normally avoid offering – but if he stays, it would be more about the lack of a suitable landing spot than necessarily an endorsement of the club’s ambition.

For Bayern, there is much to consider before summer arrives. One record that Kompany is minded to at least entertain is a team one that lurks on the horizon. “I don’t want to talk about records too much now,” said the coach, rather than saying he didn’t want to talk about them at all. “It’s still a bit too early, but there is one record that has stood for a very, very long time. This goalscoring record.” His team are 13 goals short of the 101-goal Bundesliga season of Bayern’s 1971-72 title winners. With or without Kane playing every minute, it is unthinkable they won’t pass it. Both sides of Der Klassiker’s divide have bigger fish to fry ahead of them, then, than they did on Saturday night.

Talking points

In a battle of former champions elsewhere 2007 bested 2009, with Stuttgart sweeping aside ailing Wolfsburg 4-0 on Sunday afternoon. Deniz Undav and Jamie Leweling’s first-half dismantling of the visitors less suggested their World Cup candidacy to Julian Nagelsmann than demanded it. Hoffenheim remain third despite a surprising home defeat by St Pauli, who have now given themselves a real chance of escaping the drop with Mathias Pereira Lage’s winner giving them a third win in four. That win, together with Werder Bremen ending a 13-game winless run against rock-bottom Heidenheim, pushed Wolfsburg into the bottom two – and they are reportedly considering a return for coach Dieter Hecking to save them.

The other big result for Stuttgart was Leverkusen’s failure to beat Mainz, leaving the latter six points off the former in fourth place – and the unhappiness of Leverkusen’s CEO Fernando Carro means we shouldn’t completely rule out a coaching change there either. For the visitors, the late withdrawal of their star Nadiem Amiri with a heel injury will lead to him missing the next few games – and possibly a last chance to impress Nagelsmann before he picks Germany’s squad for the summer.