Kompany “pleased” after Bayern defeat Aston Villa to round off Asia tour

Goals from Kim Min-jae and a stunning strike from Luis Díaz earned Bayern a deserved 2-1 win over a resilient Aston Villa side in the final fixture of their Asia tour before the squad returns to Germany.

Head coach Vincent Kompany was pleased with what he saw from his players against quality opposition.

“We’re trying to find our form as quickly as possible, but at this stage of preseason against a strong Villa side, I was really pleased with our performance.”

When asked if any particular player had stood out during the tour, Kompany instead praised the collective effort of his squad while highlighting the progress made by several younger players.

“To be honest, I was impressed with all the players. It’s difficult to go into these games with so many players still to come back. Obviously some players are still young, some have never played against a team of this level. But for example if I look at Tim (Binder) and Maycon (Zaragoza), how they defended, how they fought, the duels they went into, I know how tough it is to come up with a good performance.

Also the energy we had in midfield with Pavlo (Pavlović), Bischof, Konny (Laimer) who helps us anywhere we need him. We put a lot of time and energy into developing these players. This is a bit of a reward for the work we did with these young players. I was happy with that.”

Kompany also provided an update on Joshua Kimmich’s fitness after the midfielder missed the match.

“He has a little bit of something he still carries from the World Cup. He trained this morning but wasn’t involved in the game. We don’t want to take any risks before the start of the season. We think he’ll be fine, but we chose to be careful with him.”

The Bayern boss also refused to be drawn into any further transfer speculation, keeping his cards firmly close to his chest: 

“Usually when I do the press conferences in Germany I have Max or Christoph next to me. I'm not trying to avoid the question, but it's their responsibility to look into the market for either exits or incomings. We did a lot of the transfer activity we wanted to do really early. We're still getting players back [from vacation], our squad will develop from there.”

Bayern will now return home to complete the final phase of their preparations for the new campaign. Friendly matches against RB Leipzig and Heidenheim are still to come before competitive action begins with the Supercup clash against Borussia Dortmund on 22 August.