Pavlović: ‘We just keep going’

Bayern kicked off the defence of their Bundesliga title in style by beating VfB Stuttgart 5-1 at home on Friday night. “Starting the season like that is a dream. It’s the result we’d wished for,” said captain Manuel Neuer after he made his 600th competitive appearance for the club. “We gave our all from start to finish. We just keep going, don’t stop and score our goals. It’s a great feeling being able to celebrate with the fans again after such a long time,” added goalscorer Aleksandar Pavlović. fcbayern.com rounds up reaction from opening night in the 2026/27 Bundesliga.

Vincent Kompany: “It’s not just about how we start. We’ll try to keep going with what we’ve been doing in recent years, playing with lot of energy, endeavour and obviously always scoring goals. The guys showed that again today. It’s only one game and only three points. We all start from zero. We’ve not won anything yet. The hunger needs to be like on the first day. It was really hard at the start, but that’s normal. Stuttgart are physically strong, but we remained calm and our chances got better. I think we deserved to win in the end, but it wasn’t easy. We always gave our all, looked to get in behind and supported each other. That made the difference in the end.”

Manuel Neuer: “Starting the season like that is a dream. It’s the result we’d wished for. Conceding always annoys you, but you can’t prevent every situation so easily against a good team like Stuttgart. We’ll now try to keep going and do our job. Osnabrück is the next tough task. We won’t let up.”

Joshua Kimmich: “It’s always close for a long time against Stuttgart. It was very intense, but we then found the spaces.”

Konrad Laimer: “I think it was the right display by us on the first matchday, where not everything was perfect but where we showed bits again of how we want to play this season and how we are as a team – from the first minute to the last. It’s fun to be out on the pitch again with the team. I’m happy the Bundesliga is back and that we’re playing this football again as a team. After they made it 1-1, we managed to step things up a gear again and then made it 2-1 and 3-1. And we kept going after that. It was a decent display for the first game and an important three points.”

Aleksandar Pavlović: “We gave our all from start to finish. It’s often the case against Stuttgart that they slow down a bit in the second half and run out of strength. That happened again today. We just keep going, don’t stop and score our goals. It’s a great feeling being able to celebrate with the fans again after such a long time. For my goal, I just followed the play. Ismael [Saibari] saw me and provided a top assist. I’m delighted about my goal.”

Sebastian Hoeneß (head coach): “The first 20 minutes were very positive, and then we went behind from a set piece. That was very frustrating. At the end of the first half, we had to suffer. We did that, defended and went into half-time at 1-0 down. We then came out and made it 1-1 probably out of nowhere. That’s exactly what you want. You want to keep the game open for as long as possible. And then the game was gone six minutes later. It’s very frustrating. We need to improve, no question. Bayern will beat many more teams here, and probably by bigger scorelines. But our goal is still to play better in certain situations.”

Deniz Undav (captain): “Bayern just take their chances. I think if Fabi Bredlow hadn’t had such a good day, we could’ve conceded eight or nine. We had four or five situations where we made the wrong decision and they could’ve had chances from it. You need to take your opportunities against Bayern, otherwise you’ve got no chance. They just have that quality, moving, creating space for others and then finishing their moves. And when you concede, they just don’t stop.”

Read more about the game in our match report:

Five-star Bayern begin title defence in style