The Bundesliga crowned its champions and to no surprise, the title has returned to the Allianz Arena for a record-breaking eighth consecutive time. Bayern Munich won the league defeating Werder Bremen 1-0 despite being a man down, thanks to Lewandowski’s 46th goal of the season.
This season although it produced the same outcome hasn’t been a piece of cake for Bayern Munich. A 5-1 defeat to Frankfurt in November and a promising Dortmund side had indicated that it wasn’t going to be easy for the defending champions. But the appointment of Hansi Flick proved to be the turning point in the season and fast forward to June, the club climbed to the top, not only surviving the pandemic but returning to a flawless end to the season with 7 wins in 7 games and 22 goals scored.
Bayern Munich now faces a problem which has been the story in several leagues around the world, the French, Scottish and Italian leagues. Too much dominance! The exact parallel of these dominating domestic clubs is the English Premier League, where there are the top 6 clubs who have had their fare share of success through the decade, or the Spanish League, where the battle is between giants Barcelona and Real Madrid, with Atletico making their presence felt at occasions.
Let’s take a look at what has led to this difference between these tournaments. The English Premier league as I pointed out in the last paragraph has been dominated by 6 teams, Liverpool, Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham, Manchester United and Chelsea. All these clubs are in the top 10 revenue earning clubs in the world. A sharp contrast to that is the Bundesliga, where there is a huge gap between champions Bayern Munich and the rest of the league.
Bayern Munich for instance is the 4th highest earning football club in the world with a market value of 934 million euros. Their only domestic competitors for the past 2 seasons, Dortmund and Leipzig have a market value of 691 and 594 million euros. Bayern’s financial comfort has allowed them to go through quick transitions, which has been supported by a stable, strong management and the ability to keep the players that it wants. This has been pivotal in bringing fast paced change and we have seen 2 such examples in the past two years. The club has been unaffected by the retirement of two successful veterans, Franck Ribery and Arjen Robben, bringing in younger attackers like Gnabry and Coman, who have in no time risen to the very top.
And this observation can be applied globally especially with two other dominating teams, Juventus and PSG. Juventus has won the Seria A nine times in a row, while PSG has now done it 7 times in row and they sit at the top of their respective tournaments this season too. These clubs too have seen somewhat a similar story to Bayern Munich, especially Juventus who have also witnessed stability, quick transitions when its needed and the ability to spend big and bring World Class players home.
Although Bayern has seen a closer contest in the past two seasons compared to the dominance which preceded that, the team that defeat the Bavarians for the title next season will have a mammoth of a task before them.
As for Bayern, with dominance, the question now moves to the UEFA Champions League, a competition that has evaded them for the past few seasons but could very well come to the Allianz Arena too.