How are there so many title contenders this late in the Bundesliga season? Bayern Munich have lost all control on the Bundesliga title this season as they are pitted in a 6-team title race with a little under 70% of the matches already played.
I have never seen the Bundesliga been so closely contested in 14 years of me watching football.
In truth, ever since I got into football, the Bundesliga title has essentially become synonymous with Bayern Munich as they have won the trophy in 11/14 years (including a 10-year winning run from 2012/13 to now) since the 2008/09 season (the year I started watching), while Borussia Dortmund have won twice, and WFL Wolfsburg won once.
The huge financial power, club prestige, region location, and ingrained winning mentality that the rest of German football simply does not have (their main title challengers, such as Dortmund and Union Berlin, are either propped-up midtable clubs or feeder clubs) are the sole reasons as to why Bayern Munich have toppled the Bundesliga pyramid and built a near-insurmountable advantage over the rest of the league.
Yet, this might very well be the year that all comes crashing down.
I can’t stress how stupid and boneheaded it was for the Bayern Munich executives, such as CEO Oliver Khan, Executive Vice-Chairmen Jan-Christian Dreesen, and Executive Board Members Andrea Jung and Hasan Salihamidžić, to let one of the club’s greatest ever strikers, Robert Lewandowski, leave for Barcelona just because they thought he was “too old” and that they needed to replace him with then-Dortmund striker Erling Haaland, who went to Man City instead.
I’m not sure if these guys realized that not only had Lewandowski helped Bayern win 8 Bundesliga titles (2014-2021), 3 DFB-Pokal cups (German domestic cup) (2016, 2019, 2020), the FIFA Club World Cup (2020), 5 DFL-Supercups (2017, 2018, 2019-21), the UEFA Super Cup (2020) and the UEFA Champions League (2020), but he also did so by scoring 344 competitive goals for the club, which includes his phenomenal 238 league goals.
Oh, and he also is the 2nd all-time leading Bundesliga scorer in the competition’s history (he’s also only the 2nd non-German player to be in the Top-20 scorers) and is Bayern’s 2nd all-time leading scorer behind the legendary Gerd Muller.
Do you see why getting rid of him in such a tactless manner was mind-numbingly dumb, and even more so given the fact that he is only 34 years old and scored 35 league goals in 34 matches last season?
There’s a reason why Bayern Munich has the second-most draws (7) out of the all the clubs within the Bundesliga this season as they have lost one of the most cyclical finishers on the planet and replaced him with a winger. Yes, Sadio Mane is a brilliant winger with his 11 goals and 3 assists in all competitions this season, but he’s obviously (as his stats show) not even near the level of poacher/goal-scorer Robert Lewandowski is on an off-day.
Therefore, clubs like Borussia Dortmund, Union Berlin (who are the most impressive of the title challengers in my opinion), SC Friedburg, RB Leipzig, and Eintracht Frankfurt are all within 5 points or less of Bayern, even though these clubs haven’t been “lights out” as one might expect.
Dortmund, Freiburg, and Frankfurt all have at least five losses on the season thus far, while RB Leipzig and Union Berlin have dropped at least eight points through costly draws. These teams have been very good, but not the iconic title challengers of many years past. It’s just that Bayern Munich have been awful (by the club’s loft standards).
Now, I still believe Bayern have the quality and character to overcome their opponents and win the Bundesliga for an 11th straight season, but this is easily the worst form I’ve ever seen a Bayern Munich squad endure through.
And it might very well cost many of the executives, including some I named, their jobs if the Munich powerhouse can’t win its record-breaking 11th straight title.
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