Saibari Finishes Bayern’s 5-1 Opener With Two Assists

Ismael Saibari came off the bench and laid on two late goals as Bayern Munich opened the Bundesliga with a 5-1 win over VfB Stuttgart. The Morocco forward replaced Nathaniel Brown in the 62nd minute at a sold-out Allianz Arena on August 28, then set up Aleksandar Pavlović and Luis Díaz while Michael Olise took 65 percent of the man-of-the-match vote.

Joshua Kimmich had already cut Stuttgart open twice. Harry Kane left without a goal. Jamal Musiala never made the night. The player who closed the account was the summer arrival from PSV Eindhoven, on the pitch for the last half hour of a title defense that began 5-1 and still felt unfinished at the break.

How Bayern Turned a 1-1 Score Into Five

Stuttgart arrived as a Champions League side and played like one for an hour. Tiago Tomás smashed a close-range chance off the bar after Grischa Prömel had headed a Ramon Hendriks cross into his path, and Olise then struck a free kick against the post before Bayern scored. The first goal of the 2026/27 season was a set piece: Kimmich’s corner, Dayot Upamecano’s near-post flick, 21 minutes gone.

Fabian Bredlow kept it at 1-0 into the interval, saving when Díaz ran through and later from Brown and Konrad Laimer. Seven minutes after the restart, Josha Vagnoman equalized. Manuel Neuer had just blocked Jeff Chabot’s header from Maximilian Mittelstädt’s cross; the rebound sat up, and Vagnoman drove it in at 12 percent goal probability, the lowest on the sheet.

The reply took three minutes. Kimmich pounced on Angelo Stiller’s clearance, held off a challenge, and rolled Olise through. The finish was calm, 47 percent, 12.03 meters out. Three minutes after that, Kimmich’s free kick found Alphonso Davies, whose low cross met Vagnoman as the right back slipped, and the ball went in off him for 3-1. Olise had a fourth wiped off for offside at 64 minutes after Kane had slipped him in. Then Saibari took over.

THE SIX SCORING PLAYS

The live ticker of every scoring play has Olise feeding Saibari around the corner at 82 minutes, the new man spinning Finn Jeltsch, and Pavlović sweeping in from 8.66 meters at 87 percent. In the second of five added minutes, Stuttgart gave the ball away, Saibari turned Díaz in on the spin, and the Colombian scored at 95.84 km/h from 11.25 meters after missing earlier when he was clean through.

Vincent Kompany’s 4-2-3-1 faced a 3-4-2-1. Bayern took 59 percent of the ball, 21 shots to 11, nine of them on target, and 49 touches in the Stuttgart box against 17. The opening-night match report and xG split logged 4.07 expected goals to 1.09. Referee Sören Storks booked Chabot, Jeltsch, Kim Min-jae, and Prömel. Kickoff was 8:30 p.m. CEST.

The Half Hour That Put Saibari Beside Kroos

Brown had started in the No. 10 role. Saibari, 25, came on for him at 62 minutes on his Bundesliga debut, his second outing in a Bayern shirt after a Super Cup cameo in Dortmund. He did not shoot his way into the night. He waited, then gave the ball away at the right time.

The first assist was a carry into the box and a cutback Pavlović only had to meet. The second was a spun pass after a turnover, the kind of ball Díaz had already wasted once. Since detailed tracking began in 2004-05, only five players had laid on two assists on a Bundesliga debut before him. The club’s own note put him sixth, and first for Bayern off the bench since Toni Kroos on September 26, 2007.

THE DEBUTANTS WITH TWO ASSISTS

• Luis Díaz: Did it last season, then started this opener on the left and finally scored at 90+2.
• Robbie Kruse: Two assists on debut, the Australian forward now a historical marker on the same list.
• Shinji Ono: The Japanese midfielder’s first Bundesliga night also produced a pair of assists.
• Toni Kroos: The last Bayern player to do this from the bench, on September 26, 2007.
• Diego: Diego Ribas, two assists on his first German top-flight appearance.
• Ismael Saibari: Two in a closer’s shift against Stuttgart after arriving from PSV.

Sporting director Max Eberl had called him one of the most exciting attackers of the World Cup when the deal was announced, a move the club framed as early work rather than a whim. The club profile of the PSV signing leans on that same World Cup burst: a goal in his first match, three in four, and the winning penalty against the Netherlands in the round of 32. At PSV he had 19 goals and nine assists in 39 games in 2025-26, and 42 goals and 29 assists in 142 appearances in all.

The burst on the Allianz turf still looked a shade short of a full 90. Kompany used him as a closer, not a starter, which fits a player still coming down from a tournament. The two assists arrived anyway, and the club account posted the line before the stadium had emptied.

𝑻𝒘𝒐 𝒂𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒔 on his Bundesliga debut ✅

Ismael Saibari masterclass 💫🇲🇦 pic.twitter.com/N0OI2tx5UI

— FC Bayern (@FCBayernEN) August 28, 2026

Saibari had said before the weekend that he wanted to show his qualities, score, and give assists. He hit two of those three in half an hour. Tom Bischof, the midfielder some of the home crowd wanted to see earlier, only arrived at 84 minutes, on for Pavlović, with the game already 4-1.

Olise Takes the Night’s Man of the Match Vote

Olise did not need a brace to own the ballot. He hit the post from a free kick, scored the 2-1, had a second finish taken off him for offside, and led all players with six shots. Fantasy managers were handed 325 points on his name, ahead of Upamecano on 299 and Pavlović on 284, and 65 percent of the public vote followed.

France had just used him as a point guard. He left the World Cup with seven assists in eight World Cup games and no goals, a record for a single tournament, and a place in the Dream XI. The Allianz night was the club version of the same job: find Kimmich, occupy the right, and force Stuttgart to decide which runner to leave.

Kimmich’s first assist was a corner. His second was the better picture, a steal and a pass that left Olise with too much grass. StatMuse’s file had Olise at 8.3 and Kimmich at 7.9. Díaz, who kept missing until he did not, led the ratings at 8.9 with 1.64 expected goals. The vote still went to the Frenchman, which matched the run of the match more than the box score of the last 10 minutes.

A Low Cross After a World Cup on the Bench

Davies played 74 minutes, created four chances, and left for Josip Stanišić with the score 3-1. He will not be credited with a goal or an assist. The 3-1 still runs through him. Kimmich’s free kick, Davies on the right, the low ball, Vagnoman on the turf.

That is the version of Davies Bayern paid to keep. It is not the version Canada saw at a home World Cup. He missed the group stage while Jesse Marsch used him as a decoy, then stayed on the bench for a 3-0 round-of-16 loss to Morocco after telling his coach he did not feel 100 percent. Bayern had already added Brown from Eintracht Frankfurt as left-back cover. The Canadian still started this one.

Me and Jesse Marsch had a conversation. He asked if I feel 100 percent, I told him, ‘No,’ to be honest. I felt like I wasn’t there yet, so this is why we made the decision, or I made the decision to sit down and give the players the opportunity to play that can give 100 percent to the country.

Alphonso Davies, Canada captain, after the Morocco match

The hunger the club wanted back showed in the crossing, not in a sprint-off-the-screen highlight. Jeltsch had to block him once in the first half. Bredlow had to deal with the cutbacks. Stuttgart’s right side, which had just scored, was the side that cracked.

Vagnoman Put the Ball in Both Nets

Vagnoman’s night will be remembered for the slip, which is fair and incomplete. He had a strong first hour, scored a goal that had only a 12 percent chance attached, and then, six minutes after that finish, put the ball past Bredlow with his own studs. The equalizer came at 101.22 km/h from 12.72 meters. The own goal came from a clearance that never left the grass.

Sebastian Hoeneß had already lost to this opponent in the DFB-Pokal final in May, 3-0, and in April when Bayern won 4-2 to clinch the league. This was a fifth straight loss to the champions across competitions, and it followed a pattern the first half had hidden. Stuttgart hit the bar, forced Neuer into a sharp save, and still sat 18th by night’s end with a minus-4 goal difference. Bayern sat first, plus-4, three points.

Jeltsch, the young centre back, started, blocked Olise early in the second half, and took a yellow at 68 minutes. Prömel and Dženan Pejčinović were handed Bundesliga debuts and spent them chasing red shirts. Bilal El Khannouss, another Morocco international, came on for Stuttgart at 74 minutes, a few minutes after his countryman had already changed the home side’s attack.

Neuer’s 600th Appearance Sets a 21-Season Mark

Neuer could not keep a clean sheet and still left with a stack of firsts. He is 40. He made three saves. The one on Chabot was the save of the night, and it still became 1-1. The rest of the file was history.

NEUER’S MARKS ON OPENING NIGHT

• 600 Bayern games: His start was his 600th competitive appearance for the club, with only Thomas Müller, Sepp Maier, Oliver Kahn, and Gerd Müller still ahead of him on that list.
• 546 in the league: That total moved him into a share of fifth on the all-time Bundesliga appearances list, level with Mirko Votava.
• 21 straight seasons: No player had appeared in 21 consecutive Bundesliga campaigns before this night; his league debut was August 19, 2006, for Schalke 04 at Alemannia Aachen, and he kept a clean sheet that afternoon.
• The next names: Gerd Müller’s 613 and Kahn’s 632 are in range this season if the minutes hold and Jonas Urbig does not take a run of them.

Before kickoff the league had already handed out Footballer of the Year awards to Giulia Gwinn, Kompany, and Kane, a Munich sweep in the same building. Jürgen Klopp was in the stands looking at Germany candidates. Neuer, who debuted in this league when some of those candidates were children, still took the first whistle.

He called it a perfect start and refused to dress Stuttgart as a soft draw. “Stuttgart is a good team, they have good players and a strong attack,” Neuer said. “But from the start, we were determined to give everything to have a perfect start to the season. I think we showed that today.”

Kane Blanked and Bayern Still Scored Five

Kane played 84 minutes, registered a 7.2 rating, and went off with Lennart Karl coming in beside Jonathan Tah and Bischof. Last season this team scored 122 Bundesliga goals and won the title by 16 points. It opened that campaign 6-0 against RB Leipzig. It had just beaten Borussia Dortmund 2-1 in the Franz Beckenbauer Supercup. It has now gone 15 opening matches unbeaten. None of that required a Kane goal on August 28.

Musiala’s absence was the other blank. Brown started as a No. 10, not as the left back Bayern bought, and lasted until Saibari’s introduction. Laimer, Kim, and Upamecano held the back. Pavlović, rated 8.5, scored the fourth and made the case for his own minutes before Bischof’s late run. The bench that finished the game looked like a second starting eleven, which is the point Kompany keeps repeating in plainer words.

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.

Vincent Kompany, Bayern Munich head coach, on the club website

He also said the first half was hard, that Stuttgart are physically strong, and that the win was deserved once the chances stacked up. Kane’s line on his coach is shorter: the boss keeps them on the ground and pushes the limit. On this night the limit was a 5-1 against a side that had been in a cup final in May, and the last two goals belonged to a substitute who had not started.

Kimmich and Olise ran the middle of the evening. Davies forced the own goal. Neuer collected a record. Saibari, on the grass for a closer’s shift, walked off with the two assists that actually ended the argument, and with a place next to Kroos that no starter on the pitch can claim.