All-german final takes rivalry to new level
PARIS — In soccer, is Germany a nation of chokers?
The big surprise about the Champions League final on Saturday isn’t the teams — Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, are both superb. It is that such an all-German contest to become Europe’s top club has taken so long to materialize.
With the largest economy and population in Europe, modern stadiums heaving with fans, financial backing from industrial giants, an impressively run league with a fat balance sheet and mostly profitable clubs, and a web of academies hot young players, “German teams should be all-conquering, regularly scooping up trophies.
But German soccer’s motto, especially in the decade since Bayern was the last German champion of Europe in 2001, could be “close, but no cigar.”
A poster boy for German underachievement is Philipp Lahm, captain both of Bayern and the national team. His trophy haul from two World Cups and three European Championships with Germany, plus two Champions League finals (2010 and 2012) with Bayern, is zero.
Asked recently by a British journalist if he knows the term “chokers,” Lahm professed or pretended that he didn’t. But that unkind tag will be stickier than glue if Bayern loses its third Champions League final in four years at Wembley Stadium.
In 1976, Bayern won its third consecutive European Cup. But in the 36 years since Bayern’s three-in-a-row, the picture is more mixed. In European Cup finals, there have been eight German losses to just three wins — Hamburg (1983), Dortmund (1997) and Bayern in 2001. English teams, in contrast, have won 11 and lost six; Italian clubs have won eight and lost nine; Real Madrid and Barcelona have together won seven for Spain and, with Valencia, lost a total of five.