Bayern's wobble at Hertha gives Bundesliga rivals reason to daydream | Andy Brassell

Hertha’s 2-0 win over the champions exposed a thin squad in need of revamp even if Bayern recover to win the title again

Niko Kovac had a post-match plan on returning to Berlin, the city of his birth. After bumping into some familiar faces at the Olympiastadion, where his team played Hertha, he was going back to the team hotel and meeting up with various friends and relatives for a low-key drink and dinner. When you’re coach of Bayern Munich, life has its share of certainties, one assumes. It’s safe to project ahead.

By the end of Friday, Kovac was probably less in the party mood. His old teammate Pal Dardai’s side handed the champions their first defeat in a competitive fixture under their new coach, and it capped a strange and confusing four-day spell for Bayern. In a rare show of vulnerability, they had dropped five points and given the nation’s neutrals – which, such has been Bayern’s iron grip on the Bundesliga since 2012-13, is a group even wider than it might have been in other eras – the merest sniff of hope that some title titillation might be on the horizon.

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