Dayot Upamecano won't forget his 23th birthday in a hurry; it was the worst game of his career. The entire Bayern Munich line-up had a day off in the 5-0 thrashing at the hands of Borussia Monchengladbach in the DFB-Pokal last Wednesday. The French centre-back however suffered a truly disastrous 55 minutes – and could well have been substituted much earlier than that.
Upamecano’s nightmare started early, when Breel Embolo bamboozled him in the penalty area and assisted Kouadio Kone for Gladbach’s opening goal. Jonas Hofmann then easily outpaced him only to miss a chance in front of Manuel Neuer.
Upamecano then proceeded to completely misjudge a Hofmann cross just moments later, and Neuer made a superb save to save his blushes. With just 15 minutes on the clock, he was nowhere to be seen as a smooth Gladbach move ended with a great Rami Bensebaini effort to make it 2-0.
It would have been wise to take him off at that moment but Bayern waited and Upamecano's horrible evening was complete shortly after the break. He failed to clear a simple long ball and was shouldered aside by Embolo who made it 4-0 in emphatic fashion.
The birthday boy sat on the bench; the shock visible in his eyes.
"Substitution rescued Upamecano," the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper wrote.
The fiasco occurred at a time when things seemed to be going smoothly for the €42 million (£36m/$49m) man, who was signed from RB Leipzig to replace outgoing Champions League winners David Alaba and Jerome Boateng.
At the beginning of October, he doubled his number of appearances for the France national team and was instrumental in winning the Nations League. Upon returning to club duty, he assisted a Robert Lewandowski rabona goal in the 5-1 demolition of Leverkusen, had a superb outing in the 4-0 Champions League at Benfica and helped to keep another clean sheet in the 4-0 win over Hoffenheim, adding two more assists – even though he knew very little about one of them when the ball just rebounded off his back.
"Things are going well for us, we've kept a lot of clean sheets now. That's our job as a defence, but I'm very happy to help attack as well," Upamecano said. However, after the Gladbach debacle, fans remembered that not everything had been so rosy since the beginning.
Upamecano's Bayern debut on the opening Bundesliga matchday, at the very same Borussia-Park, was very shaky – and the champions were lucky to escape with a 1-1 draw. He was also at fault for both Eintracht Frankfurt goals in their sensational 2-1 win at the Allianz Arena a month ago.
The verdict was clear back then.
"Upamecano is prone to bad blunders and positional errors under pressure. Top performances alternate with weak ones, and he is very inconsistent," Frank Linkesch wrote in Kicker.
Some fans were beginning to question whether Upamecano was in the starting line-up thanks to his connection to new coach Julian Nagelsmann, who worked with him at Leipzig.
It has to be said, though, that the defender’s acquisition had nothing to do with Nagelsmann. Bayern decided to pay Upamecano's release clause back in February and Joachim Low announced his decision to leave his position in charge of the Germany national team only in March. By April, Hansi Flick made it clear that he intended to succeed Low and only then was Nagelsmann approached.
That appointment was obviously good news for Upamecano, who didn't have to get used to working under a new coach. Nagelsmann rates Upamecano very highly, describing him as a "defensive beast" on numerous occasions.
It was quite natural that Bayern would put Upamecano at the top of their wishlist. He was young but experienced, with four full Bundesliga seasons under his belt, and available for a reasonable price. The Bavarians intended to build their defence around him and such a promise made it easy for the Frenchman to agree to join Bayern over vague interest from Chelsea.
Staying in Germany also meant that Upamecano wouldn’t have to learn another language. He was unsure about studying German when Red Bull Salzburg recruited him at the age of 17, before he had even made his debut for French second division Valenciennes. The quality of the project and the facilities convinced him and he never looked back.
And he had always felt much more confident on the pitch than off it. Upamecano used to be a shy kid and had a stutter; he visited a speech therapist for a few years to overcome it. Remarkably, it disappeared when he played football.
"As soon as I entered the pitch there was a change in me,” the defender recalled in an interview to So Foot.
“I spoke more on the pitch than off. I had a hard time expressing myself to my classmates, the coach, and all the other people. So inevitably, I hardly spoke. But during matches, I felt some kind of strength.”
That inner strength helped him make meteoric progress at Salzburg and Leipzig. When things go smoothly on the pitch – and that is often the case – Upamecano is imperious. But when the game starts poorly, such as Monchengladbach last week, he is bound to lose self-confidence and make a lot of mistakes.
At Leipzig, team-mates, fans and the press were very forgiving towards Upamecano after his poor games because he was usually so excellent. At Bayern, the situation is totally different because excellence is expected.
The Frenchman has never before experienced such demands and the transition is proving to be rather problematic. Chosen to be the new Bayern defensive leader, he has not always been up to the standard and the birthday disaster could lead to long-term problems if not treated correctly.
"We will help Upa to recover. It's inexplicable because he played really well recently," sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic said. As part of the recovery project, he was left on the bench at Union Berlin on Saturday and only entered the pitch when the three points were assured.
Benfica await on Tuesday - the first big test after last week’s historic defeat and all eyes will be on Upamecano to see how he bounces back.