For a multitude of different reasons, it has not been a great season for Bayern Munich, and there are certainly a handful of players that individually performed well under their standards and potential. There were always going to be question marks over how the club would operate offensively without Robert Lewandowski, but him leaving the club last summer for Barcelona isn’t the sole reason Bayern has been playing well below their usual efficacy.
Former Bayern and Liverpool midfielder Dietmar Hamann feels that one of the players that has really under-performed this season is Leon Goretzka.
“Leon Goretzka is probably the disappointment of the season. I thought he would be a cornerstone for Bayern and also for the national team. He was completely lost this season – but that could also be said about many others,” Hamann vented on a Sky90 appearance after Bayern’s 3-1 loss to RB Leipzig over the weekend, as captured by @iMiaSanMia_en.
While Hamann didn’t want to absolve blame from any of the other players in the squad, he made a point of singling out Goretzka for his stature as a foundational player for Bayern’s midfield alongside Joshua Kimmich. The pair of players also signed their most recent contract extensions within close proximity to one another (fall of 2021). The club has intentions for both players to be monumental in terms of the team’s growth and stability, but Goretzka has had a hard time living up to that this season.
It’s unfortunate that injuries have plagued Goretzka’s time at Bayern ever since he joined from Schalke, and he missed the beginning of this season due to recovering from a knee operation. Last season, Goretzka missed a lot of time due to a persistent hip/knee problem and he’s never really seemed to reach the same heights he’d been hitting prior to starting in the 3-2 der Klassiker win over Dortmund from that season. Perhaps he was rushed back too quickly for that particular match and that has been largely to blame for his injury recurrence rate.
