Bundesliga Blues
With Bayern Munich winning their 10th successive title, there has been debate as to the state of the Bundesliga in 2022, now i'm here with an opinion nobody asked for.
Okay, the Allianz Arena isn’t exactly Castle Grayskull (Jupp Heynkes could probably pass for Skeletor though), but much like the cartoon villain, Bayern Munich do have a tight grip over the German Bundesliga. The Bavarians have won 10 consecutive titles since 2012/13, three of those being doubles, and two trebles. They are an immaculately well-run club. They buy who they like from whoever they want, they roll over nearest rivals Dortmund like its child’s play, but what else are they supposed to do?
Football clubs are not just revenue-driving assets for billionaire owners to collect passive income from, sometimes they also play football. The aim of football is to win, and Bayern are good at it. Very good at it. They are ruthless, if you are no longer useful to the Munich machine, you are no longer a part of the Munich machine. Just ask Mats Hummels, Ivan Perisic, Arturo Vidal, Douglas Costa, Mario Gotze and probably Corentin Tolisso very soon. Those are just a few examples of the club’s hierarchy trading in sentimentality for the constant pursuit of perfection. Fair play to them. They won four titles in the 90s, six in the 2000s, eight in the 2010s, and are on their way toward winning all ten in the 2020s. Unlike Paris St-Germain in France, another side derided as being kings of a one-team league, they haven’t slipped. They don’t sign stars for the sake of it and leave the team planning to later, they hire coaches with a vision, and back that vision. Even in what has been a ‘bad’ year for them they still won the league at a canter with multiple players underperforming, a coach yet to adjust to his new side and even one time they had 12 players on the pitch, just because they could.
It isn’t Bayern’s job to make it ‘fairer’ for everyone, surely the onus is on the other 17 teams in the league to try and compete with them. That being said, surely something can be done, no?
The often praised 50+1 fan ownership model prevents most of these teams from being bought up by whirlwind moguls who may be able to give them the cash to compete, but it also stops them from being bought by greedy asset strippers who want to mine the club for all its worth and then dip. I’d say that’s probably a net positive.
Maybe the other teams need to stop being unserious and start putting some effort into this football thing. Of the last 5 sides not named Bayern to win the Bundesliga, three have been relegated at least once since (Stuttgart, Werder Bremen & Kaiserslautern), and another (Wolfsburg) finished third-bottom twice and only managed to stay in the league via the play-offs. Pull the finger out, boys. Borussia Dortmund, RB Leipzig and Bayer 04 are the only consistently decent-to-good title challengers and one of those teams is constantly mocked for how often they lose to Bayern whilst the other is the sporting wing of the company that made Zyklon B.
Do you change the distribution of prize money? well, not really, unless you want to outwardly say “this is deliberately to hurt Bayern” which would be very bad. The Bundesliga’s 18 sides got more revenue per team than La Liga, Serie A and Ligue 1 last season. Alongside this, the clubs are spending money. Dortmund spent 40 mil last year. Wolfsburg spent 50, RB Leipzig spent almost 100 million. The Red Bull war machine are certainly putting a lot of weight behind their squad, but they are still vulnerable to the call of cash for their players (Upamecano, Konate) as well as their policy of only signing young players meaning they cant benefit from purchasing the ready made article.
There isn’t really an answer, which doesn’t make for a good article but I haven’t written anything this week and felt bad about it so here we are. In all seriousness, the mostly likely next title winner is probably some 2021/22 Lille type situation where the perfect combination of squad and manager comes along, wins, then immediately falls apart. Probably not Dortmund, not sure they’re even capable of that though, let-down specialists.
At least Bayern are nothing special in the Euroleague Basketball I guess.