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Guardiola gets off to perfect start at Bayern Munich

Guardiola gets off to perfect start at Bayern Munich

Following the retirement of Jupp Heynckes, Bayern Munich appointed former Barcelona boss Pep Guardiola as their new head coach. The Spaniard began life in Munich in the best way possible, winning the league by 19 points ahead of Jurgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund.

Schalke and Bayer Leverkusen finished in the top four, with Leverkusen just one point ahead of Wolfsburg in the race for the final Champions League spot.

Hamburg escaped relegation thanks to an away goals victory in the play-off with Greuther Furth, while Nurnberg and Eintracht Braunschweig went down.

CHANGES

Bayern Munich and Bayer Leverkusen had coaching changes before the start of the season. Guardiola returned from a year away from management to take over at the Allianz Arena, and co-coach Sascha Lewandowski stepped down at Leverkusen leaving Sami Hyypia as the team’s sole coach.

However, Leverkusen’s failure to properly challenge at the top of the table saw Hyypia dismissed by April, with Lewandowski returning in a caretaker role. Hamburg’s flirtation with relegation meant Thorsten Fink was sacked and then replacement Bert van Marwijk also was ousted, leaving Mirko Slomka in charge for the last couple of months of the season.

Guardiola’s most important purchase was midfielder Thiago Alcantara, who he had worked with at Barcelona, for €25 million, while Bayern spent even more on Dortmund attacking midfielder Mario Gotze, a €37m signing who provided 10 assists in his first season in Munich.

Luis Gustavo was sold to Wolfsburg for €16m, while Emre Can joined Bayer Leverkusen for €5m, and Mario Gomez left for Serie A side Fiorentina for €15.5m. Dortmund used some of the money from the Gotze sale to sign Armenian winger Henrikh Mkhitaryan for €27.5m from Shakhtar Donetsk and Saint-Etienne forward Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang for €13m.

Sokratis traded Werder Bremen for Dortmund, while Leonardo Bittencourt moved to Hannover. As well as Can, Leverkusen signed Hamburg’s Korean winger…


Source link : https://www.footballcritic.com/season-reviews/guardiola-gets-off-to-perfect-start-at-bayern-munich-bundesliga-in-2013-14/119

Author : [email protected] (Martin Macdonald)

Publish date : 2024-08-02 16:00:00

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