“We can stop wondering who will in the Bundesliga title this season.”
Borussia Dortmund CEO Hans-Joachim Watze used these words to describe the upcoming absence of a Bundesliga title race.
“Bayern [Munich] will be the first team ever to win the title four seasons in a row,” he went on to add, “and then next year a fifth time.”
What Watze was describing, in a way that was actually a little less downbeat than it sounds written down, was a situation whereby before any cross has been mishit, any player has been sent off or any points have been dropped, everyone thinks they know who will be celebrating becoming German champions at the end of May.
“We have other objectives,” declared Watze, finally, both underlining his point and leaving a little room for the mystery of what exactly those secret other objectives might be.
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In along all of the slightly odd implications that arise from this peculiarly 21st century footballing certainty, perhaps the oddest is that the lack of a club-based challenge eventually presents an existential challenge to Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich. The extreme lack of a challenge becomes in itself a challenge as Bayern has to decide how exactly it is supposed to approach another league season in which winning can’t be the primary aim, because winning is assumed. It’s forced to decide for itself what its alternative aim is, and then how it’ll get there.
The “what” is simple enough. Either Bayern can set out to break even more Bundesliga records—finding a higher calibre of competition in history, where one is lacking in the present—or it can look beyond the local competition even as it engages with it and use Bundesliga games as a means of preparing for a greater challenge in the Champions league, where Barcelona currently bosses things.
The choice has, really, already been made. New additions to the record books don’t appear to bring much joy or fanfare (“most wins” and “most consecutive weeks at the top of the table” have already been achieved and met with apathy), so Europe seems to be the certain priority based on everything Bayern says or does. But crucially that decision doesn’t seem to have brought with it much clarity of thought about “how” to get there, as any look at last season will tell you.
When Bayern played Barcelona in the first leg of its Champions League semifinal, here was its lineup: Neuer; Rafinha, Benatia, Boateng; Bernat, Alonso, Muller, Lahm, Schweinsteiger, Thiago; Lewandowski. Putting out this team involved seven personnel changes from the team that lost 2-0 to Bayern Leverkusen the previous weekend, plus a radical (see: mistaken) formation change which ended up being dropped 20 minutes into the game. By contrast, Barcelona, the eventual European champions, made one change from its 8-0 win over Cordoba on the same weekend—switching in its “Champions League goalkeeper” Marc-Andre ter Stegen—and keeping its shape very much the same as it beat Bayern 3-0.
Guardiola and Bayern’s approach to that game felt like a precise summary of their approach to Europe and the Bundesliga in the two years since he took over. Europe had definitely and correctly been prioritised as the league title had already been bagged—a skeletal team played in the Leverkusen defeat—but rather than getting a competitive advantage out of that relationship Bayern came out against Barca looking a bit confused by the whole thing. Mistakes were made at the back, control was lost in midfield and cohesion was lost up front to form what was, at times, a perfect storm of inadequacy. In the end, Bayern was made to look a little all over the place by a Barcelona team that looked far surer of itself and far more secure in its plan.
The difference between the two sides—or, to be fair, one of the differences—was that Barca had been pushed into clear-thinking by a league title race that would run on until the penultimate game of the season, where Bayern had been confirmed as Bundesliga winners in late April and, really, way before that. There was no opportunity for speculative tinkering at Barca, while there absolutely was at Bayern, and it didn’t work out well.
Now returning to this season, the exact same opportunity—and maybe even the same direct comparison with Barcelona—is all set to turn up again, unless Wolfsburg does something spectacular that no one expects. As such, the same potential for confusion undoubtedly remains in place. “What” to aim for might be decided upon, but “how” to get there still might well not be clear at all.
The situation can play out in two directions. Either Bayern and Guardiola can repeat the same solution to the second part of their existential challenge and get similar results with sporadic team selections and confusion in the Bundesliga and Champions League, or they can do something unlikely: they can conjure some inner-clarity followed by a dose of restraint.
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Practically and ultimately, this second option, which is the only one which might work, would play out against all odds as a renewed focus in the Bundesliga. It would mean that league games can’t be broad experiments this time, even if the league is already won: they need to be reframed as specific practise for major Champions League nights. This wouldn’t mean conservatism and no room for subtle thinking and trying out new ideas; it would mean not exploring the outer-limits of the freedom Bundesliga-certainty creates simply “because it was there.”
Bayern is in the peculiarly 21st century footballing position of its main challenge being a lack of challenge. It can’t make a title race appear from nowhere. But if it decides, conversely, to take seriously that lack of challenge, and shows some clear-headed restraint, it has a way out of the existential trouble. It has what to aim for and how, perhaps, to get there. Or at least something new to try.
Whether it really takes on the harder decision of the two—whether Guardiola is up to that challenge—will be the real test. Is he a big enough man(ager) to try something different? Is this, probably his final year at the club, going to be the time where he finally mixes things up by stopping the mixing things up? It’ll be interesting to watch it develop—a club and manager essentially playing around with an existential challenge every week.
And it all means that while Hans-Joachim Watze’s prediction of a Bayern Bundesliga win looks very likely, that’s only half the story.
Ethan Dean-Richards is a London-based writer. Follow him on Twitter