Kane’s first ‘Klassiker’ at Bayern overshadowed by Cup defeat

DUESSELDORF, Germany (AP):

However Harry Kane imagined preparing for his first “Klassiker” for Bayern Munich against Borussia Dortmund, it probably didn’t involve losing to a third-division team.

The England captain watched on as an unused substitute as Bayern was knocked out of the German Cup 2-1 by Saarbruecken on Wednesday in one of the competition’s biggest ever upsets. Bayern now have to turn it around to play Dortmund tomorrow.

It wasn’t just an embarrassing loss that knocked Bayern out of contention for a trophy. Matthijs de Ligt suffered a partial knee ligament tear in the game, leaving the team with a gap in defence, and Thomas Müller indicated a possible rift in the squad when he publicly criticised teammates for disrespecting the fans.

Even at Bayern, where any one loss tends to tip the club into crisis mode, that’s a lot to deal with.

All the more so for Kane in his first “Klassiker” in front of Dortmund’s famed – and loud – “Yellow Wall” of fans. Kane indicated last week that his experience of the North London rivalry between Tottenham and Arsenal might come in handy.

“It’s going to be a tough match. Obviously, Dortmund have started well this year as well. It’ll be my first one but I’ve played in a lot of derby games, rival games so I’m looking forward to it,” Kane said last Saturday after scoring a hat-trick in Bayern’s 8-0 win over Darmstadt.

History is on Bayern’s side against Dortmund – they have not lost to them since 2019 – but de Ligt’s injury leaves coach Thomas Tuchel scrambling to patch together the defence. Bayern said yesterday that a scan showed de Ligt had a partial tear in a ligament in his right knee and that he would miss “upcoming games”, without giving a timeline for his return. De Ligt had only last month returned from another knee injury he picked up in September.

Bayern doesn’t have any other fit central defenders in their first team, and the right-backs who could have covered that role last season, Benjamin Pavard and Josip Stanisic, were allowed to leave the club in the offseason.

Dortmund’s new pragmatic approach this season, dubbed “less sexy, more success”, by coach Edin Terzic, was on show against Hoffenheim on Wednesday in the team’s third 1-0 win in four games. That said, a 3-3 draw at Eintracht Frankfurt last Saturday saw the return of some of the panicky defending that Terzic has sought to eliminate.