ARJEN ROBBEN

Bayern Munich made the perfect start to the defence of the Bundesliga leaders after managing a 5-0 victory over Hamburg in the opening game of the campaign.

Much was made out of the opposition’s threat, but it soon went out of the window in the second half when Bayern Munich increased their advantage from 1-0 to 5-0. It is still amazing to think that Bayern went on to the half-time break with a 1-0 advantage thanks to the goals from Benatia. In the second half, Robert Lewandowski, Thomas, Müller and Douglas Costa all joined in the fun.

After the match, midfielder Arjen Robben claimed that he is extremely happy to have a player like Costa in the ranks. The Shakhtar Donetsk start only recently joined Bayern did not take long for him to open his account with the German club, who are the overwhelming favourites for yet another consecutive league title. It has for a long time been a one horse race in German football and this has been confirmed by the three successive league titles won by Bayern. This season, however, their major task will be to get the elusive Champions League title for the first time under Guardiola. They were last European champions in 2013.

“We got exactly what we wanted. We wanted to lay down a marker today and show that we’re ready. It wasn’t easy because they played really defensively but scoring five goals at the end of the day is always good.On a personal level I’m just really happy to be back out on the pitch. I need to get back into my rhythm and to do that I just need games. We had to be patient on the one hand today, but on the other we needed to attack aggressively too and try to find the gaps,” said Robben.