“After 25 minutes, I looked up and thought to myself, I’m going to pass out.”
Joshua Kimmich’s description of Bayern Munich’s win against Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday is testament not only to the intensity of the first half, but also the furious manner in which the Bundesliga side has started the 2025-26 season.
In short, this is the best ever start to a season in Europe’s top five leagues. When Bayern reached 14 consecutive wins, they broke a 33-year-old record set by Italian side AC Milan in the 1992–93 season. And now, Bayern Munich have made it 16 consecutive wins by beating the current Champions League holders in the French capital despite playing with 10 players for the entire second half.
In that time he has scored 33 goals in nine Bundesliga games – his second-best performance (he scored 34 goals in the 2023–24 season, which set a new Bundesliga record). In the Champions League, their perfect start has perhaps been eclipsed only by Arsenal, who have also won all four games so far but have done so without conceding a goal.
The company thinks it’s right
This is truly a historic start, and at the helm is head coach Vincent Kompany. For a man who was not first-choice and whose arrival was viewed with considerable skepticism after his Burnley side were relegated from the Premier League, his ability to deal with the many challenges that come with being Bayern Munich boss is admirable.
Under his leadership, Bayern’s intensity not only looks higher but is also better executed, as the first 45 minutes in Paris showed. Equally, the threat of Luis Diaz’s back three of Harry Kane, a reborn Serge Gnabry and Michael Olise is full of variety and flair and there is a balance Bayern has not seen in years. The fact that all of this has been done without injured key man and Germany international Jamal Musiala is both surprising and interesting for Bayern’s future.
Kompany also appears to have inspired this team’s stars to work together rather than worry about themselves, as a disciplined second 45 minutes showed in Paris. Even talks about the future of Harry Kane and Manuel Neuer have been quietened by everyone involved. Neuer, the 39-year-old goalkeeper, produced a sensational performance in the second half, making it clear this team is focused on the here and now. And this may be their biggest superpower.
The 39-year-old Belgian coach has prepared Bayern for not only one of their greatest seasons, but one of the greatest seasons in football history. Bayer Leverkusen’s 2023–24 campaign in which they were just one game away from completing an undefeated treble shows that an unbeaten league season is no longer just an idea, but a very real reality, certainly for an ambitious club like Bayern Munich.
History with a happy ending?
The last time Bayern Munich started a season so well was in 2015, with Pep Guardiola as coach, and Arsenal won 12 in a row before having their perfect start in the Champions League broken. Nevertheless, that season ended with a domestic double and an exit on away goals against Atlético Madrid in the Champions League semi-finals.
In fact, the surprising similarities don’t end there. Ten years ago, Robert Lewandowski had scored 12 goals after nine Bundesliga games, including his famous 5 goal, nine minute hat-trick against Wolfsburg. This season, Harry Kane also has 12 goals after nine league games, which is more than the total of eight other teams in the Bundesliga.
Perhaps more important than an unbeaten league season is another Champions League title. It has been five years since Bayern last won this competition in 2020, beating PSG in the final at the end of a season that included a 15-game winning streak.
Many have put an asterisk on that win, as it happened during the pandemic with a different format. Since then they have reached the quarter-finals four times and the semi-finals once. With the passion for European success rising among Europe’s biggest clubs, it is clear that this competition is what everyone wants.
Perhaps it will all come to an end when Bayern play Arsenal in the Champions League at the end of the month. Perhaps Union Berlin will surprise everyone and burst Bayern’s Bundesliga bubble this weekend. But right now, Vincent Kompany and Bayern Munich are in historic form and if players can stay healthy, it seems very difficult to bet against them.