Thomas Muller says Bayern Munich proved they have not lost their hunger by putting five goals past Hamburg without reply in their opening Bundesliga fixture of the season on Friday night.
The defending champions have won the Bundesliga in each of the past three seasons and are already up and running in their bid for a record-breaking fourth straight title with an impressive display at the Allianz Arena.
"Of course we want to win the league, strangely enough," said Germany forward Muller, who scored twice in the win, to ARD television. "The aims are always high at Bayern and today we've shown that, despite all our successes in recent years, we're still hungry, and that's great.
"Look at when we were 2-0 up - we still wanted more."
Establishing that two-goal cushion was not so easy, however. Bayern faced a deep-lying Hamburg side who frustrated their hosts for 45 minutes before falling apart once that second goal had gone in.
According to Bayern coach Pep Guardiola that is something his side are going to have to get used to this season as opponents try everything to trip them up.
"It was hard, up against six defenders," said the Catalan. "When you're up against a side playing a 6-3-1 formation, it is not going to be easy to break them down, but our aim is to do that.
"We've got to get used to this kind of formation and we've got to know how to break through it, and we did that better in the second half."
Hamburg, conversely, saw their own limitations once the result was beyond doubt at 2-0.
Unlike in 2008, when they recovered from the same deficit to pick up a point in their opening fixture of the season in Munich, there was never going to be a route back this time against a side who have now put 36 goals past them in their last six meetings in Munich.
"That second goal came too early and we had to be cleverer at that stage," admitted Hamburg coach Bruno Labbadia.
"It's a learning curve and it hurts, but we do have to learn. We know we've got a lot of work to do. We've got to build the team up bit by bit."
At least the northern Germany side have already got their most difficult game of the season out of the way.
"I don't like coming to Munich with all the history here, but now we can move on," said Hamburg goalkeeper Rene Adler.
"We don't see ourselves on a par with Bayern, although it is still frustrating to lose 5-0 in Munich."
Source: PA
