By Dan Gaichas
They left it until the final ten minutes of the match, but goals from players who scored in international play last weekend scored for Bayern in their 2-0 win over FC Schalke at the Veltins Arena. Those players were Robert Lewandowski who scored for Poland last week and Joshua Kimmich in stoppage time who last weekend netted his first international goal for Germany.
Lewandowski, shown here with Poland v Hungary in 2011, also scored for his National side last week – Photo credit Roger Goraczniak
It was a fairly even match for the most part as both teams had chances though took none of them for the first 80 minutes. Schalke were denied most notably by David Alaba sweeping out chances for Manuel Neuer in the first half and then the bar on Klaas-Jan Huntelaar’s shot in the 55th minute. Bayern had several chances and most of those needed better finishing. Lewandowski had several chances, but the accuracy was not there until the 81st minute.
Javi Martinez sent a perfect ball to Lewandowski get in alone on Schalke’s Ralf Fährmann and blasted a shot into the net to give Bayern the lead. As Die Königsblauen pushed for an equalizer, they would be caught on a counter attack two minutes into stoppage time where Lewandowski fed Joshua Kimmich who beat Fährmann far post for his first Bayern goal. It was all about patience on this evening in Gelsenkirchen.
“The first goal was incredibly important,” said Lewandowski. “We knew we would have to be patient today. We saw in the first half that Schalke were putting in a top performance. At half-time all we talked about was biding our time and we struck when it counted in the second half.”
“It was the tough game that we had expected it would be against tough opponents,” said Bayern manager Carlo Ancelotti. “Schalke caused us a great deal of problems and they were a bit better in the first half, while we were better in the second. In the end, we had patience and were able to raise our game a bit towards the end. We’re happy to go home with a second win in our second game of the season.”
So two matches and two wins in the Bundesliga and the first of what is going to be seven matches in three weeks. The next match is in the Champions League at the Allianz Arena on Wednesday against Russian side FC Rostov. Kickoff is at 1:30pm Central time.
