Bayern Munich’s 1-0 win over Paris Saint-Germain felt significant. It was neither bombastic nor overly dramatic. It did not possess the overwhelming power that the Allianz Arena has witnessed in the past.

And yet, given his quiet authority, his competence and his minimal fuss, this was everything for Bayern: a valuable step towards progress in the Champions League, an encouraging victory over notable opposition and probably a new standard under Vincent Kompany.

This was their seventh win since the Barcelona debacle in October, when Kompany’s side were beaten 4-1 by an opponent who could play through them. Bayern looked chaotic and naive that night, and as they left Spain their manager Kompany was under more pressure than at any other time this season.

He was never the first choice for this job. He was fifth or sixth in line at best, and everyone knows it. And because they do, defeats like those in Barcelona are particularly damaging. Instead of focusing on the qualities that attracted Bayern to Kompany, they invite a predatory media to wonder aloud about his time at Burnley and the relegation they suffered from the Premier League last season.

But since that loss, Bayern have won seven games in a row and kept seven clean sheets. Against PSG, Kompany’s team kept that streak alive against a credible opponent with heavyweight credentials.

It’s a win that Bayern’s coaching staff will feel was deserved. They are quietly happy with the progress this season – with the chances created, the goals scored and the unbeaten record in the Bundesliga. Barcelona’s defeat was the first outright disappointment and exposed significant weaknesses. While Kim Min-jae and Dayot Upamecano, the two centre-backs, were ridiculed for their performances, the real culprit was under-par pressing. Bayern played without the ball with enough enthusiasm, but not nearly enough accuracy and Barcelona were technically good enough to exploit that flaw.

This was different. PSG never got long, uninterrupted periods of possession. Bayern swarmed, suffocated and disrupted. Kingsley Coman and Leroy Sane started either side of Jamal Musiala in attacking midfield and cut off their flanks, pressuring the visiting centre-backs into long balls, lateral passes and turnovers that, if not for a few errant final passes and miscommunication could have led to more goals.

Bayern’s pressure was disciplined and organized. It was brutal, but coherent – ​​done in pairs and trios, rather than one-off, disjointed runs – and that was a testament to Kompany’s influence.

The younger players in particular have enjoyed the attention to detail and instructional nature of some of the training sessions – the video analysis was also popular – but this seemed to betray an investment from the squad as a whole. Not just the flexible members, who have yet to win stacks of medals and make more money than they can ever spend, but also the veterans.

That matters because those were the conversations during the summer – that was one of the fundamental doubts about Kompany. Sure, his playing career would earn him a certain appeal among the impressionable players – those who grew up watching him captain Manchester City, perhaps – but what about the hardened core who had dominated the Bundesliga, won the Champions League and , in some cases, a World Cup canceled?

(Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)

So far they seem just as responsive – just as receptive to the ideas. No, Bayern are nowhere near their former peak. They are neither that talented nor that formidable. But they are getting better and, most importantly, Kompany and his staff are showing control over this group, evidenced by the improvement in areas of their game that don’t usually take care of themselves.

Attackers score goals. Playmakers create opportunities. Goalkeepers make saves. All these things can happen outside of a fertile environment. But teams rarely become harder to beat and harder to play against if they are not well coached and a group of players does not believe in a common direction.

The individual performances still form a worthy subplot. Joshua Kimmich delivered his best performance of the season against PSG. So often maligned as a recycler of possession rather than a true orchestrator, Kimmich was hugely influential, the link between defense and midfield, midfield and attack. Leon Goretzka was also a force who played with that familiar power and timing that – honestly, until a few weeks ago – seemed permanently in his past. Coman has woken up, Sane and Serge Gnabry are both starting to move.

But perhaps the real beneficiaries of Kompany’s work are those centre-backs. Kim scored the winning goal at the Allianz Arena and received his man of the match award at full-time. But before that, in the seconds immediately after that final whistle, he, Upamecano and Manuel Neuer embraced at the goal line and celebrated another clean sheet. A well-deserved moment, given the many criticisms that part of that team has had to endure.

Interestingly enough, however, little seems to have changed about those players individually. Their decisions are slightly better – Upamecano and Kim timed their jumps from the defensive line particularly well on Tuesday – but their attributes and playing styles are not clearly tempered.

The ugliest moments of that Barcelona loss all seemed to involve one or both of them desperately chasing their own goal or getting caught up in a horrific mismatch against Lamine Yamal, Fermin Lopez or Raphinha. But often that was the result of a structural failure further out in the field and a chain reaction that led to a large valley of uncovered space.

PSG came to Munich with the players to create similar situations. That they never did was partly due to Ousmane Dembélé’s red card in the second half, but also to a Bayern team that seems less vulnerable to transitions, better able not to overdo it in pursuit of turnover, and is more responsible in the way they do it. attack. Everything they do, they do at a higher level than a few months ago.

That’s a start. Bayern Munich naturally have high standards, and narrow wins this side of Christmas usually mean little. In this case, however, Kompany and his players can be satisfied with their seventh victory, their seventh match without setbacks and a small victory that should not be lost in the bigger picture.

(Top photo: Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)