Reflecting on the January announcement that Pep Guardiola would take charge of Bayern Munich this summer, allied to the superiority of the country’s representative youth teams, Arsene Wenger declared that ‘tomorrow’s football will be played in Germany, certainly’.
The Arsenal manager’s assertion was at odds with the widespread feeling in English football of our game having been slighted by Guardiola. Surely the almighty Premier League would have been a more suitable home for one of the standout coaches of his generation?
That opinion is being hastily re-visited in this stunning Champions League week. The first-leg semi-final victories for Bayern and Borussia Dortmund over Barcelona and Real Madrid respectively, were not entirely unexpected. The same is not true of the crushing score-lines and, to a larger degree, the manner in which the two German clubs comprehensively outplayed, outworked, and outthought their Spanish opponents.
With only a remarkable turn of fortune able to prevent a Wembley final between the Bundesliga’s top-two outfits, there is a rush to acclaim a new era of German supremacy. Consequently, the wonderful Barcelona team which has changed the landscape of this continent’s game during the course of the past four years – in tandem with the all-conquering Spanish national side – is pronounced a spent force.
The reaction is typical of a game which spikes the emotions like no other. If a week is a long time in politics, it is an age in today’s football world.
In fact, it is the ever changing face of football which both Bayern’s and Borussia’s monumental performances have evidenced, over and above any definitive pointer to future German hegemony. Gary Neville, commentating for Sky Television in Dortmund’s Westfalenstadion, repeatedly spoke of how success arrives in ‘cycles’.
Those cycles turn at pace. It is under a year since Chelsea were lifting the Champions League trophy after toppling Bayern Munich in a final played at the Bavarian club’s Allianz Arena – a feat which takes on greater magnitude with every fresh viewing of Jupp Heynckes’ fearsome unit.
That terrible blow for the ‘home’ team, suffered on a night which all associated with Bayern had believed destiny foretold would end with them lifting European club football’s greatest prize for the first time since 2001, completed a gut-wrenching season.
The Bundesliga title had been retained by Jurgen Klopp’s vibrant Dortmund team – with an 8 point advantage. That overwhelming points margin was only two fewer than that which the champions enjoyed over Bayern a year earlier, when German football’s most decorated outfit had finished third.
Borussia completed a 2012 double by dismantling their Munich rivals 5-2 in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium. In a telling portent of his liking for the biggest stages of all, Robert Lewandowski struck three of his team’s goals.
Furthermore, a German team top-heavy with Bayern players (7 in the starting eleven and one substitute), and considered genuine contenders at last year’s European Championships, succumbed to a 2-1 semi-final defeat against Italy. Indeed, such was the Italian’s dominance of that game, that serious questions were being asked regarding the progress of what was previously considered to be the brightest collection of footballers from any single nation.
The most stereotypically ruthless group of individuals, Joachim Loew’s side could now add last-four failure to defeat at the same stage of the past two World Cup tournaments, and a single-goal loss against Spain in the final of the 2008 European competition.
A cliché it may be, but ‘Never Write off the Germans’ is oft repeated with good reason. Bayern’s payback this year has been staggering. They clinched the league championship with a record breaking six games to spare. Four matches remain, and the Bavarians hold a 20 point lead over Dortmund, and have been beaten only once in 30 outings.
Last May’s German cup horror story is set to be put right. It is difficult to envisage mid-table Stuttgart putting a spoke in that particular wheel in this June’s final.