It had been a turbulent week on the board of Hamburger SV. Days after the dismissal of commander Mirko Slomka, the U-23 coach Josef Zinnbauer was appointed commanding officer of a lost ship, trying to recover from a 0-3 home loss against the newly-promoted Paderborn and a 2-0 defeat away from home against Hannover 96. Zinnbauer's debut couldn't have been tougher: with zero points and no goals scored in three matches, his crew would need to give it their best to dodge an iceberg called FC Bayern München to avoid sinking to the bottom of the Bundesliga table for at least one more round.

The visitors, on the other hand, were in a much more positive mood. After an effortless triumph against a hopeless VfB Stuttgart and a dominant but nerve-racking win against Manchester City, Guardiola sat comfortably on the cockpit with his thrust levers up and flaps set, ready to confirm a good take-off run and climb to the top of the Bundesliga table, hopefully leaving Leverkusen, Hannover 96 and Dortmund behind. A confident Bayern fielded a starting XI consisting mostly of reserves, but suffered an additional last-minute blow as Arjen Robben picked up an injury during warm up and was replaced by Thomas Müller.

The first minutes saw Bayern dominate most of the actions against a very physical HSV that tried to disrupt the passing style of the visitors and break on counters. However, neither the Bavarian domination nor the Hamburger extra motivation were enough to produce good scoring chances for the initial minutes of play. The first highlight of the match came on minute 19: Rafinha got himself some space on the right attacking flank and his cross successfully found Pizarro moving to the near post, but the Peruvian's shot went over the bar. For the rest of the first half, the match was mostly a mix of uncoordinated effort and a random exchange of direct plays from both teams. With no conscious planning from either side, the break came as a relief for many of the viewers and HSV went to the locker celebrating their best 45 minutes of football in a long time.

Despite the unremarkable first half, no changes were made during half-time. The style of play, on the other hand, changes drastically as both teams took more risks and tried to grab an early goal to sit on for the rest of the second half. Two minutes after the break, Nicolai Müller broke into open space between Boateng and Dante and successfully shot past Manuel Neuer, but missed the target by a few meters. Two minutes later, Bayern started a sequence of chance-creating that lasted for almost ten minutes, making use mostly of the space found by Shaqiri on their attacking right flank. As an unimpressive Højbjerg was replaced by Xabi Alonso, clear-cut chances wasted by Thomas Müller, Philipp Lahm and David Alaba meant the scoreline remained untouched.

With half an hour to go, previous tactics went out the window as the match became less and less organized. Lewandowski and Jiracek came in for Shaqiri and Arslan on minute 66 and Julian Green was subbed in to replace a rather ineffective Lasogga and face his parent club. Pushed by his fans, HSV managed to press Bayern a bit more efficiently and looked  closer to their first goal of the season, but nothing came out of it. Two defensive mistakes by Djourou and Neuer marked the late game, as the defender missed a clearance and almost allowed Müller an easy finish, and the keeper miscalculated his role as a sweeper and had to use his hands outside the box to deny Green a chance to score from the middle of the pitch.

The final score sees Bayern stuck a few points from the top of the table and although it doesn't offer HSV much in terms of table position, it's indeed a refreshing result against a strong opposition. The Bavarians now get ready to host the temporary leaders SC Paderborn on Tuesday and the Northerns take the road to face Borussia Mönchengladbach on Wednesday.