Bayern Munich boss Niko Kovac felt his side played with “zest” and “verve” and were deserved 6-0 winners against Mainz.
There was no Champions League hangover for Bayern as they returned to the top of the Bundesliga table in emphatic style on Sunday.
James Rodriguez scored a hat-trick while Robert Lewandowski, Kingsley Coman and Alphonso Davies were also on the scoresheet for the reigning champions as they bounced back from their midweek home defeat to Liverpool.
The win, Bayern’s 13th in their last 14 league games, saw Kovac’s team move back above rivals Borussia Dortmund on goal difference at the summit.
“A compliment to the lads. We’re pleased we’re at the top again. We saw a lot of zest today, a whole lot of verve, very many good moves,” Kovac told the club’s official website.
“Taken altogether it was a deserved win and the right margin of victory. Now we can work calmly and with focus in the two-week international break.”
Thomas Muller, one of five changes Kovac made to the side that were knocked out of the Champions League four days ago, emphasised the importance of Bayern bouncing back quickly – especially after Dortmund’s injury-time win 24 hours previously.
He said: “We absolutely wanted to turn in a good display, we had ambitious plans after Wednesday. We wanted to take our chances and strike back.
“Dortmund did their homework yesterday evening. I’m glad we got into the game so well. We were clearly superior from the start. The way we played was just fun, we were flexible and exploited the space well.
“It was important to improve our goal difference in the last three matches. The table is looking better than in the first half of the season of course.”
Mainz became the second successive side to lose 6-0 at the Allianz Arena in the Bundesliga, following Wolfsburg last weekend, and boss Sandro Schwarz said: “We conceded an early goal.
“We had good moves up front from the 15th to the 25th or 30th minute. Taken altogether it wasn’t enough. We only escorted them for long spells, without really tackling with bite.
“That’s why we suffered the same fate as a few teams have done over the last few weeks. We conceded the goals too easily.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here