UEFA Champions League 2019-20: 3 reasons why Tottenham Hotspur lost to Bayern Munich

#2 Bayern’s high line made their attacks incredibly dangerous

Bayern Munich kept a high line, with full-back Alphonso Davies looking dangerous in attack

From the opening whistle of the game, Bayern Munich seemed content to play in an incredibly reckless style, pushing an extremely high line in order to overload Tottenham’s inexperienced defence, which contained youngsters Kyle Walker-Peters and Juan Foyth. Full-backs Benjamin Pavard and Alphonso Davies were more than happy to charge forward, and that meant that the German side had plenty of dangerous attacks throughout the game.

Sure, it must be noted that Bayern were wide open to counter attacks throughout the match too – and had Spurs been more ruthless with their finishing, the Bavarians could well have conceded more than one goal – but the high line worked in this match as goalkeeper Manuel Neuer was largely able to mop up most of the danger, and Spurs were without their key attackers anyway.

Whether Bayern will play in this way going forward is unknown – obviously nothing was riding on this game meaning the risks they took were perfectly acceptable – but if they do choose to follow this pattern, then we should expect them to score – and concede – plenty of goals in the knockout stages of this competition.