Mainz 3-4 Bayern: Bundesliga Match Report

Mainz 3-4 Bayern is the most extraordinary period split of the round: Mainz led 3-0 at half-time and Bayern won the second half 0-4. Seven goals, all of them in a match where one side was three ahead at the interval and lost.

Bayern arrived on 79 points from 30 matches with a goal difference of +80, fifteen clear of Dortmund and with the title long since a formality. Their previous five had produced four wins including 4-0 over Union Berlin, 5-0 at St. Pauli and 4-2 against Stuttgart — a side scoring in fours and fives as a matter of routine. Even so, recovering a three-goal half-time deficit away from home is not routine for anyone.

Mainz were tenth on 34 with -9, mid-table and safe, having drawn 1-1 at Mönchengladbach in their previous match. Their recent scoring pattern was the modest one: three wins in five, none of them producing more than two Mainz goals. Three goals in 45 minutes was more than they had managed in any full match of the run. The reverse fixture in Munich in December had finished 2-2, the only points Mainz took from the champions this season.

Bayern went to 82 points and a goal difference of +81, extending the lead at the top to eighteen with three rounds left and adding a further goal to a total nobody else in the division was close to. The points were never the story; the recovery was. A team that concedes three in a half and wins by scoring four in the next one is operating at a level the rest of the league had stopped competing with.

Mainz stayed on 34 with the difference sliding to -10. Nothing changed in their position and nothing was at risk in it, but there is no comfortable way to describe leading a match 3-0 and losing it. The distance between the two clubs went from 45 points to 48, which is the only number that puts the afternoon in proportion.

Our pre-match call was Bayern Win at 1.50. It came in, and it spent 45 minutes looking like the worst call of the month. The reasoning was ordinary — the champions away at a mid-table side, a goal difference of +80 against -9, four wins in five — and it was correct in the only sense that pays. What the half-time score demonstrates is that a 1.50 price on a team of this quality is not a price on control; it is a price on them eventually being better, which is a slower and less comfortable thing to be right about. Verdict: won