No beer fest for beaten Bayern

After one of their worst ever starts to a season, German giants Bayern Munich will not be making their traditional visit to their home city’s world-famous beer festival, the club said Monday.

“Due to the sporting situation, coach Louis van Gaal has decided there will be training at 11:30am instead,” the club said in a terse statement.

Visiting the beer festival “would not make any sense now”, Bayern’s sporting director Christian Nerlinger told the regional tabloid TZ, after seeing his team slump to a second straight league defeat at Dortmund on Sunday.

The defeat to Dortmund was coach Louis van Gaal’s third loss of the season and left last year’s Bundesliga kings and Champions League finalists 12th in the table, 13 points shy of leaders Mainz.

The performance prompted a ferocious reaction from the club’s chairman, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, who said their position in the table was “unworthy of Bayern”.

“The situation is worrying and does not please us at all,” he told Sky television in Germany.

The Munich beer fest — or Oktoberfest — this year marks its 200th birthday, drawing millions of people from around the world.