Serge Gnabry scored his 100th Bundesliga goal as Bayern Munich survived a late scare to beat SC Freiburg 3-1 at the Europa-Park-Stadion on Sunday and reclaim top spot — a win earned for their absent head coach Vincent Kompany.
Bayern arrived in the Black Forest stretched and under stand-in leadership. Kompany remains in hospital in a stable condition after collapsing during reserve-team training on Friday and, as Beyond The Final Whistle reported in its preview of the seven absentees, assistant Aaron Danks took charge of a side showing five changes from the midweek 2-2 Champions League draw with Arsenal. Jonas Urbig replaced the injured Manuel Neuer in goal, with Jonathan Tah, Nathaniel Brown, Michael Olise and Lennart Karl all restored.
Freiburg, third in the table after a superb start of four wins and a draw from their first five games, matched Bayern early on. Then a centre-back decided to play like a centre-forward.
Upamecano scores like a striker, Gnabry makes history
Dayot Upamecano won the ball near his own box on 16 minutes, exchanged passes with Olise and kept sprinting through the middle before slotting a composed finish past Mio Backhaus — a goal any striker would claim, and the start of a man-of-the-match display in which the Frenchman had more touches than any team-mate.
Chances stayed scarce until three minutes before the break, when Gnabry played a one-two with Brown and finished beyond Backhaus for 2-0. It was a landmark strike: his 100th goal in the Bundesliga, on his first league start of the season, as the Bundesliga's official match report recorded. "Scoring my 100th Bundesliga goal is a very special moment," Gnabry said afterwards, in quotes carried by Bavarian Football Works. "I wasn't really thinking about it, but the most important thing was that it helped the team win."
Freiburg rally, but Olise has the final say
Bayern should have buried the game after half-time — Harry Kane headed a close-range chance over and substitute Ismael Saibari was denied by Backhaus — and instead Freiburg were handed a lifeline on 82 minutes when Tom Bischof turned a low cross into his own net, as Reuters reported in its account of the late scare. The hosts threw everything forward and Matthias Ginter's late header was kept out by Urbig, before Backhaus surrendered possession in his own half deep in stoppage time and Olise rolled the ball into the empty net at 90+5 to settle it.
The numbers told the story of a controlled but not comfortable afternoon: Bayern edged the expected goals 2.25 to 1.37.
So what? Top spot regained — and a Klassiker next
The win preserves Bayern's unbeaten start and lifts them back to the top of the Bundesliga with 17 points from seven games, ahead of Borussia Dortmund on goal difference. Freiburg stay third on 13 points, but have now lost to Leverkusen and Bayern in successive weeks after that flawless opening — the gap between a good side and Germany's elite, measured in two first-half lapses.
For Bayern, the timing matters twice over. Next weekend brings Der Klassiker against Dortmund, the game that will decide who leads Germany into November, and they will likely play it still without Kompany on the touchline and without the injured Luis Diaz — with Gnabry, on this evidence, the obvious man to keep his place. A squad win, delivered by a defender, a milestone man and a stoppage-time gift, is exactly the kind Kompany would have wanted from his hospital bed.
Beyond the Final Whistle: This is what champions do in a crisis week — no head coach, no first-choice goalkeeper, five changes, and still three points away at the league's third-placed side. Gnabry's 100th goal will take the headlines, and rightly so, but Upamecano starting the move in his own half and then dominating the game was the real statement: Bayern's depth is not a luxury, it is the reason they are top. Can Dortmund stop them in the Klassiker — or is the title race already bending Bayern's way again?
