Bayern Munich Faces Injuries in Telekom Cup Against RB Leipzig
Pre-season friendlies are supposed to ease players into a new campaign, not rip chunks out of a squad a week before it starts. Bayern Munich walked into the Telekom Cup looking for rhythm and answers. It walked out counting casualties.
The tone turned grim inside the opening 10 minutes against RB Leipzig. Konrad Laimer, facing his former club, threw himself into a challenge with David Raum and came off worse. He didn’t shake it off. He couldn’t. Laimer trudged off, Bayern’s midfield plan for the afternoon already torn up.
That was only the beginning.
As the heat rose and the minutes piled up, Bayern’s bench became busier than Vincent Kompany would ever have wanted. Min-jae Kim, a cornerstone of the back line, didn’t even make it to the final whistle. He departed around the 66-minute mark during the second hydration break, another first-team pillar forced out before the real games have even begun.
The pressure finally told on Jamal Musiala’s body as well. Just four minutes after he struck Bayern’s third goal, the 21-year-old went down, appearing to suffer from heat exhaustion. Medical staff rushed on. For a moment, a stretcher seemed likely. In a match that should have been routine preparation, seeing one of Europe’s brightest talents struggling to stay on his feet felt like a jolt.
Even when the final whistle came, the problems didn’t stop. Sacha Boey cramped up after full time, one more physical concern on a day that offered Kompany more alarm than encouragement.
Kompany’s early headache
The timing could hardly be worse. The Franz Beckenbauer Supercup looms next week, with another friendly against Heidenheim squeezed in before that. These aren’t fringe names picking up knocks; every player affected is a first-team option, central to Bayern’s plans for the 2026/27 season.
Pre-season is meant to be about fine-tuning systems, sharpening fitness, and giving minutes to those on the fringes. Instead, Bayern leave the Telekom Cup hoping scans and assessments bring good news rather than a string of early-season absences.
For Kompany, still shaping his Bayern identity, the challenge has arrived earlier than expected. The fixtures won’t wait. The question now is simple: how much damage did one summer friendly really do to Bayern’s start to the season?
