Bayern still hungry for more
Ex-Bayern Munich and Germany playmaker Mario Basler has one basic message on the eve of the new Bundesliga campaign – don’t expect Bayern’s eight-year championship hegemony to crumble any time soon.
Basler, still as trenchant in his opinions as he was in his playing days, does not merely feel good about the Bavarians’ exceptional squad. Equally, if not more important for Basler, is Bayern’s remarkable desire and mental toughness.
In a recent interview with France Football magazine, Basler explained: “Winning is in the DNA of the club. When the situation demands it, Bayern players always step up to the mark. They adore these instances. While they are energised, other teams seem to shrink as the pressure mounts in the home stretch. Bayern have an appetite for success that has no limits. They are ravenously hungry.
“I fear that clubs like Dortmund and RB Leipzig are too inconsistent and fearful in the key moments to unseat Bayern. Take last season. Bayern had
“Bayern players always step up to the mark…They have an appetite for success that has no limits” Mario Basler
a terrible run of results in the autumn. Yet still managed to clinch the title.”
What makes Bayern even more formidable at the moment is that they have the ideal coach in former Germany assistant Hansi Flick, someone perfectly in tune with the club’s ethos and lofty expectations. Unlike his predecessor Niko Kovac, whom he replaced last November, Flick enjoys an infinitely better working relationship with the players. The feeling in the dressing room is that Flick is everything Kovac wasn’t: an attack-conscious risk-taker, much clearer in his match-day instructions and a superior communicator.
Flick has revived Bayern in more or less every possible way. The football is more fluid, enterprising and attractive; work rate and tactical flexibility have improved enormously and after the collective hiccups of the Kovac era, the Reds suddenly are a slick, cohesive unit again.
Inevitably, all eyes at the Allianz Arena will be on striker extraordinaire Robert Lewandowski – who topped the Bundesliga scoring charts last term with 34 goals – and newly-acquired big-money winger Leroy Sane. The
problem for opponents, though, is that the Bayern attacking threat stretches far, far wider. Last season, no fewer than 14 of their players were on the scoresheet in the Bundesliga.
Over the last two decades, just five Bundesliga coaches – Matthias Sammer and Jurgen Klopp at Dortmund, Thomas Schaaf (Werder Bremen), Armin Veh (Stuttgart) and Felix Magath (Wolfsburg) – have succeeded in knocking Bayern off their perch. Overtaking Bayern is akin to scaling Everest, but if any of the current batch of top-flight bosses has it in him to be an ace mountaineer, it has to be young RB Leipzig trainer Julian Nagelsmann.
As proven by RB’s excellent results in the 2019-20 Champions League, Nagelsmann, 33, quite clearly knows what he’s doing. His side have all the organisational bases covered, they are consummate shape-shifters, press with intelligence and intensity and break forward with panache and generosity. Although his squad is relatively raw, with an average age below 24, they perform with a great deal of maturity. That is to Nagelsmann’s immense credit.
The all-important question for Leipzig is how successfully they fill the gap left by the sale to Chelsea of star striker Timo Werner, their number one supplier of attacking verve and potency, who netted 28 Bundesliga goals last term. They have turned to sister club RB Salzburg to sign South Korean forward Hwang Hee-chan, and believe that he can fill Werner’s boots adequately.
In other good news for RB, muchcoveted French centre-back Dayot Upamecano, rumoured to be on the radar of Bayern Munich and Arsenal, has signed a new deal, thus ending months of speculation.
Dortmund, German league runners-up in each of the last two seasons, would have to spectacularly self-destruct not to finish in the top three. They have an impressive squad, including several young guns with vast potential, carry significant attacking threat – netting a club-record 84 domestic league goals last season
– and feature the best young striker in Europe in Erling Haaland.
Sadly for the Ruhr giants, they are light in certain areas. Their defence can be porous and they have a habit of losing focus, often found wanting in key moments. For all his admirable qualities as a tactician and teacher, coach Lucien Favre, about to begin his third season at the Westfalenstadion, now is running a credibility deficit, with fans and media types launching brickbats a plenty. Critics claim he is not the winner that Borussia need.
The coronavirus pandemic has hit the Dortmund wallet especially hard. The club posted a €45 million loss for the 2019-20 business year and chief executive Hans-Joachim Watzke accepts he will have to cut costs across the board: “The loss of revenue we’re currently experiencing in all sectors is dramatic. We have to save as much as possible. For me it’s an especially difficult chapter.”
If Dortmund, one of Germany’s best-run and well-resourced outfits, are having to watch the pennies, the alarm bells should be ringing for everybody.
If Dortmund, one of Germany’s best-run and well-resourced outfits, are having to watch the pennies, the alarm bells should be ringing for everybody