Bayern Munich vs Borussia Dortmund result: Robert Lewandowski leads humiliating Der Klassiker rout

You can say that Borussia Dortmund bottled this game, but it felt like even more than that in some ways. 

It was not just a collapse but a historic one, a team that have played brilliant football all year who completely fell apart. They imploded. They lost the capacity to do the basics and it resulted in a humiliating defeat, one which likely will cost them the Bundesliga that they have led for so much of the season, and one which will live long in the memory of both sets of fans for contrasting reasons. 

This was the 100th Klassiker and it will become remembered as a classic in many senses, just not a competitive one. It was as dominant from Bayern Munich as it was pathetic from their visitors. A fevered pre-match atmosphere giving way to the gleeful smugness of a Bavarian demolition. Bayern won by five but it could have been more. It probably should have been. 

Bayern Munich are used to domination. It is part of who they are, part of the incredibly cheesy but unbelievably catchy songs that their fans sing from those steepling sides of the Allianz Arena and part of the way in which their players must perform to keep those same supporters happy. 

Their domination of the Bundesliga title – six in a row as things stand, 28 in total – has been under threat all year as this young, fearless Borussia Dortmund team stunned the league and pulled clear, even boasting a lead of double-digit points at one stage. 

As Bayern shook off their pre-Christmas wobble, however, they began to reel in Dortmund and it has been clear for some weeks now that this fixture, with so little time remaining in the campaign, would ultimately prove crucial. 

Dortmund only needed a draw to keep Bayern at arm’s length. A win in the house of their biggest rival would almost certainly have taken the Bundesliga title back to Westphalia. 

What happened instead was a return to that domination, with Bayern taking control of the game in the first minute and never relinquishing it, not for a minute, not for a second. 

Mats Hummels should have scored inside 60 seconds and would eventually open the scoring after 10 minutes, heading home from a corner in the way he couldn’t in those opening exchanges. 

Between those two opportunities Dortmund hit the post, just about the only sniff they got of Bayern’s goal all afternoon and the sole time that Bayern felt threatened, because soon it was 2-0, 3-0 then more. 4-0 by the break with Dortmund’s colourful, raucous travelling fans the only thing about the club that lived up to expectations on a day of utter ineptitude. 

Pre-match talk had focused on how Bayern may be able to get at Dortmund’s young defence and, in a rare twist, the analysts and talking heads couldn’t have been more right. Abdou Diallo, Manuel Akanji and, in particular, Dan-Axel Zagadou were terrorised by the guile and experience of Robert Lewandowski, enjoying one of his best-ever seasons, and Thomas Muller. 

Zagadou was hauled off at half-time for his own safety, but only after a calamitous showing that peaked with Bayern’s second goal. The Frenchman’s pass went too close to Lewandowski, who intercepted and found the bobbling ball easy to lift over the desperate Roman Burki rushing out of the Dortmund goal. Lewandowski held off Zagadou to acrobatically volley home and that error, making it 2-0, felt like the breathing room Bayern needed. Little did they know they were about to thoroughly fill their lungs. 

Javi Martinez made it 3-0 on 41 minutes and Serge Gnabry 4-0 just two minutes later. Martinez’s sweet finish was a product of Dortmund’s defence being unable to clear their lines and Gnabry nodded home after smart work from Lewandowski and Muller. It was Lewandowski who then idled home a fifth in the dying moment’s of the game to heap further misery on their wounded opposition.

On a day when Dortmund’s backline lost the ability to even execute the fundamentals of defending, Bayern’s Hummels – who only ventured forward for set pieces – could easily have score three or four goals himself. He won every header in attacking positions and if Dortmund’s inability to stop Bayern was confined to dead-ball situations then they might have had a prayer. 

Niko Kovac’s side was just so utterly superior throughout that this game barely felt like a contest. Given the season that set this fixture up for greatness, given the excitement we’ve seen from this young Dortmund side and the emergence of a potential superstar in Jadon Sancho, it was easy to feel disappointed with a match where the spectacle was deflated by half-time. 

It was a procession of a second half though that doesn’t mean what remains of the season will be too. Bayern are a point ahead with six games to play and a superior goal difference but their final two games of the season come against third-placed RB Leipzig and fourth-placed Eintracht Frankfurt. 

This isn’t over, even if this performance from Dortmund was as apocalyptic as they come. Their job had been to try and get a draw – possibly a win – from the Allianz Arena to hold off their rival. 

The challenge now is far greater, not just to win all their remaining games and hope for a slip-up from Bayern but to pick up the pieces of a young team that was absolutely taken apart. 

Call it a bottle, call it whatever you want. How this Dortmund performance will be remembered by the history books will, rather curiously, be defined by the next six matches rather than whatever it was we saw today.