“You’re hopelessly behind, you know there’s a big game in Paris on Tuesday. But that doesn’t matter. This game in Mainz is what counts. The coach finds the right words and the team reacts.” Bayern Munich hope that there will be games to come which define their campaign more than a straightforward win – statistically speaking – in a Bundesliga game with the title of champions already done and dusted.

Yet Max Eberl was right. In terms of finding the kernel of what has already made Bayern’s season an extraordinary one, of what might yet make it an exceptional one, this really meant something. Absorbed on paper, from a distance, it could be mistaken for more grist to the mill of uncommon numbers; keeping alive the possibility of a joint best-ever Bundesliga season in terms of points, and extending the record goalscoring season in the league campaign to a barely-believable 113 from 31 matches.

What Bayern’s sporting director was determined to underline during his appearance on ZDF’s Das aktuelle Sportstudio, the Saturday night German free-to-air television institution, was that his team and his coach had done something genuinely special on an obligation of a afternoon before the real thing, Tuesday’s trip to Paris Saint-Germain for a Champions League semi-final first leg of titanic proportions.

At half-time in Mainz, Bayern trailed 3-0. The goal that gave Urs Fischer’s team that margin on the stroke of half-time would have convinced most teams that it simply wasn’t their day. Bayern’s Jonas Urbig pulled off an outstanding one-handed save to push Nadiem Amiri’s shot on to the crossbar, but the spin took it up and back towards the visitors’ goal, where Sheraldo Becker toed it in. And that, really, should have been that.

For most teams, losing on that sunny Saturday would have meant nothing. For some previous Bayern teams it meant nothing – think Pep Guardiola’s infamous quote from his debut season, when he declared that “Die Bundesliga ist für uns dabei” (for us, the Bundesliga is over) shortly before a trip to Augsburg with the title already secure and a loss precipitated, in his own view, a small drop in intensity before a chastening 4-0 defeat to Real Madrid in their Champions League semi-final second leg.

Vincent Kompany is coming from a different place, and it is not just that he brought on Harry Kane and Michael Olise as half-time substitutes for the second straight week that underlined that. Kane detailed afterwards that the coach had “some strong words” with his team. “He had the right to tell us it wasn’t good enough,” said the England captain. The response was emphatic. After Nicolas Jackson, who Eberl later confirmed will not have his purchase option taken up, pulled one back the subs feasted with a masterpiece by Olise and a scrambled effort by another replacement, Jamal Musiala, paving the way for Kane’s winner.

It was a stunning comeback that would be a highlight of most teams’ season that will probably be a footnote of Bayern’s, but it distilled the Kompany method perfectly, from both a tactical and a psychological point of view. In having a coach who seems impervious to the typical pressure of being at the head of Bayern, they have a man who is the perfect leader for the here and now of elite level European football. His reaction to the first half on Saturday proved that standards are to be kept. Bayern are hungrier, are more demanding of themselves than ever before.

Kompany is jarringly different to any other Bayern coach in recent memory, and past incumbents that have come from different backgrounds with contrasting approaches and personalities. Yet this is a leader with his feet on the ground, inspiring the highest standards but rooted in reality, who understands real life and has managed to drain the drama from FC Hollywood. It feels as if a Bayern coach you could authentically describe as holistic would have been mocked or shouted down in the not too recent past. Not this one.

To this point it feels as if – unlike Guardiola in 2014 – Kompany has found the perfect balance between rest and maintaining sharpness. Last Wednesday’s display, in which Bayern had pulverised Leverkusen to reach a first DFB-Pokal final since 2020, was a case in point. Bringing back the big boys, Bayern wiped the floor against a team which arguably have the best squad in Germany beyond themselves. Again, the real revelation was in the detail rather than a score, a 2-0 away win – wrapped up late by Luis Díaz – which flattered Leverkusen in every way. It had been a demolition, and would have been that on paper if not for the interventions of Mark Flekken in Leverkusen’s goal. It was a reminder, before their trip to France, that maximum intensity bubbles just below the surface for Kompany’s side.

All of which leaves Bayern in a great place as they visit the Champions League holders. PSG do have a fully fit squad, unlike the German champions (with Raphaël Guerreiro pulling up here and Serge Gnabry already out for the season), and they had a bigger, more resourced group in the first place. Are they fitter, sharper, more ready, though? We will find out over the next week or so. The feeling within Bayern is that they are ready to take the treble.

Not that it, necessarily, should define Kompany. He is already the most influential Bayern coach since Guardiola who, unfairly, is sometimes viewed beyond Bavaria as only a qualified success at the club, having never lifted the Champions League in his three-year tenure. Guardiola’s legacy, though, in terms of a footballing high watermark, lives on. What Kompany has done not just to a team but to Bayern’s sporting culture is likely to do the same.

“That was a beautiful reflection of what we’ve achieved in recent months,” reflected Eberl on Saturday evening. What Bayern have still left to achieve this season could well supersede that.

Talking points

Despite that chastening lesson in the DFB-Pokal, Leverkusen recovered to win at neighbours Köln and keep themselves in with a chance of Champions League football. Patrik Schick’s double was largely against the run of play (“our performance wasn’t great,” he admitted), and referee Robert Hartmann later recognised he was wrong to award a penalty against Köln’s Eric Martel from which Schick scored the first. Still, it took the Czech striker to 100 Leverkusen goals and left the club in fifth, two points behind Hoffenheim (who won at Hamburg) while Bayern’s Pokal final opponents Stuttgart could only draw at home to Werder Bremen. Borussia Dortmund confirmed their Champions League return with a 4-0 breeze against Freiburg.

The relegation battle is still intense, with long-written-off (not least here) Heidenheim beating St Pauli for a second straight home win, sealed by an emotional Eren Dinkci, with the club setting up tests at the stadium to find a bone marrow donor for the midfielder’s partner, who is ill with leukaemia. Wolfsburg stayed in the mix by taking a point from Borussia Mönchengladbach, with the latter overtaking Union Berlin, who were overpowered by form team Leipzig in Marie-Louise Eta’s second straight loss.