Manuel Neuer calls early Augsburg goal ‘a ridiculous mistake’ as Bayern held to 2-2 draw

Manuel Neuer accepted responsibility for the early goal Bayern Munich conceded against Augsburg after the hosts scored just eight seconds into Saturday’s 2-2 draw at the WWK Arena.

The Bayern goalkeeper miscontrolled a pass from Luis Diaz immediately after kick-off, allowing Robin Fellhauer to score into an unguarded net. The strike became the fastest goal in Bundesliga history, beating the previous record of nine seconds, jointly held by Kevin Volland and Karim Bellarabi.

Ironically, Volland’s record-breaking goal was also scored against Neuer in 2015.

“It was a ridiculous mistake from me,” Neuer told reporters after the match. “I should have put the ball onto my left foot because two players were pressing me from the right. Then I tried to find a solution. But quite simply, I should have made a different decision.”

Neuer said he had to recover quickly from the error, with the match still in its opening moments.

“After the goal, the first thing I had to do was gather myself, take a deep breath and move on from it,” he added. “Of course, there was still a lot of hope because it was only the first minute. We still had a chance to turn the game around.”

Bayern eventually levelled through Ismael Saibari in the 55th minute, but Augsburg regained the lead when Rodrigo Ribeiro scored nine minutes later.

Substitute Nathaniel Brown restored parity for Bayern in the 80th minute, although the visitors had four goals ruled out for offside during the contest.

“We had chances, but unfortunately we failed to take them,” Neuer said. “We were also a little unlucky with some of the marginal offside decisions.

“It is a match most of us have never experienced before. It was very strange to score that many goals and then see them disallowed.”

The result cost Bayern the opportunity to move to the top of the Bundesliga. They remain second on 11 points, two behind leaders Borussia Dortmund.