Being Bayern: Match report v. Bate Borisov

If you're like me, you had to switch away from the English commentators for this match. I'm sorry, but I don't want to be reminded of the CL final every 5 seconds, thanks. Thank goodness for the German stream!

Apparently, playing against ten men is difficult for us, but playing with ten men means you're facing an ANGRY and motivated Bayern squad. Thomas Muller, you are FC Bayern and that goal was so typically you it was both hilarious and a lovely statement of "Yeah, no, we're still gonna win. But nice try."

For the record: Boa didn't deserve a red card. He was clearly playing the ball and while it was a yellow, it was NOT a red. The foul on Contento that followed a few minutes later was far more dangerous and deserved a red if Boa was red-carded for his challenge. Apparently, it's okay for a Bate player to clear Contento's legs out from under him intentionally, but Boa can make a play for the ball.

Though it did help that a second yellow resulted in a Bate player being sent off. Clearly, Polyakov has been taking diving lessons from certain Spanish strikers who play in England and will remain nameless.

We had four awesome goals today, though, and it was really great to see four different men sharing in the scoring (though I want Gomez to come back to the league with a vengeance and win the cannon again this year). I have a hard time picking a favorite goal today...they were all pretty wonderful. Mario got his first CL goal of the season, as did Alaba and Shaqiri and Thomas...proved that a bad call won't ruin us this year.

Other highlights of today's match included the German comms talking about how Toni Kroos has the best shooting technique in the league and Kapitan Basti. And the linking up of Shaqiri and Gomez is something that we should all be paying attention to: two of our goals came from those two, one with Shaquiri feeding the ball to Mario and one with Gomez feeding the ball to Xherdan. And, if you're like me, you were excited to see that Manu is third in line for the captaincy. For a Schalker to join Bayern and become so beloved so quickly is impressive and it makes me incredibly happy to see Manu fully embraced by the team and the fans (and he's got experience and leadership, two things you want in someone who will occasionally captain the team).

But the best part? We are officially Gruppensieger! Congrats to the boys on taking first place in our group in the CL! We'll leave you today with the sign of support the team sent to Holger today.