Club World Cup: Dayot Upamecnao set to not start for Bayern Munich vs. Auckland City

Bayern Munich start their FIFA Club World Cup campaign in the United States this weekend in a tie against Auckland City in Cincinnati, Ohio. Bayern’s international players have only just linked up with the rest of the squad in the states after returning from their respective duties for friendlies, UEFA Nations League matches and World Cup qualifiers, so and the rest of the squad was not too far ahead of them in their arrival to Orlando, Florida.

New signings Jonathan Tah and Tom Bischof are both going to be with the team for the tournament thanks to Max Eberl negotiating with Bayer Leverkusen and TSG Hoffenheim, respectively. The pair of new Bayern players will give Vincent Kompany a boost in depth with the amount of injured players in the squad and/or players that have not played a whole lot of football recently, or perhaps even too much in a short window.

Dayot Upamecano is one of the Bayern players that has recently worked his way back from a considerable injury layover, but the French center back isn’t exactly going to be thrust right into the action. Per information from Sport Bild’s Christian Falk and Tobi Altschäffl (via @iMiaSanMia), the plan for Upamecano is to get some minutes off of the bench against Auckland City to get some match time in his legs and then have him potentially return to the starting lineup in the following group stage match against Boca Juniors in Miami, Florida.

For Upamecano, a lot of the progressive minutes plan has to do with him only just returning from injury, but it is still very much understood that Kompany will field a weakened side against Auckland City. It is not a matter of not showing proper respect to the New Zealand-based opponents, but a large contingent of their squad have full time jobs and a lot of them had to take vacation time just to be able to take part of their group stage matches for the tournament.

Hopefully for Bayern and Upamecano, he gets solid minutes and works his way back up to full fitness by the time the knockout stages come around. On paper, there is no reason why Bayern shouldn’t, or wouldn’t, make it out of their group, let alone win it.