How do Oliver Kahn and Hasan Salihamidžić ever get jobs in football again after this debacle? After losing 3-1 to RB Leipzig, Bayern Munich now need their archrival Borussia Dortmund to lose on the final matchday of the Bundesliga season to be crowned champions again as they have blown winning the title on their own terms.
Normally, I’d say I feel bad for the Bayern Munich fans, but one year without a title won’t be the end of the world for them.
The mighty Bayern Munich have been far less than mighty this season as their CEO Oliver Kahn and Sporting Director Hasan Salihamidžić, also known as Dumb and Dumber, have not only blown a treble chance for the club this season with the premature sacking of Julian Nagglesman, but they also might have inflicted Bayern with a humiliating trophy-less season from the managerial change.
Do you know the last time Bayern Munich finished a season without winning one of the major trophies (Bundesliga league title, DFB-Poktal domestic cup, and one of the three European trophies) a German club competes for? The 2011/12 season.
For those who don’t know the circumstance surrounding that year, Bayern Munich had recently promoted longtime academy talents Thomas Muller, Toni Kroos, and David Alaba into fulltime 1st-team starters, young goalkeeper Manuel Neuer was brought in from Schalke to take the reins in net, club captains Bastian Schweinsteiger and Philip Lahm were the premier players alongside the developing winger core of Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery, Mario Gomez was the sole striker after German icon Miroslav Klose left for Lazio, and Jerome Boateng was bought from Man City to be one of the two starting center backs.
In other words, the iconic German powerhouse team of the 2010’s decade was just starting out its infancy phase in the 2011/12 season, so it’s understandable that this team failed to win a trophy for the German giant.
Though, it’s certainly not from a lack of talent as this team fell to Jurgen Klopp’s magnificent Borussia Dortmund team in the Bundesliga by seven points (1st. Dortmund: 81 PTS; 2nd. Bayern: 73 PTS) and the team also fell to Dortmund in the DFB-Poktal Cup Final (5-2 Dortmund victory).
And, if the bad luck couldn’t get any worse, Bayern lost the Champions League Final in front of a raucous Munich crowd to Chelsea and Didier Drogba’s legendary last-minute header to tie the match, and then his game-winning penalty to win the CL Final 4-3 for the Blues.
Sure, Bayern didn’t win a trophy that season, but reaching two finals and finishing runners-up in the Bundesliga to an all-time great Dortmund side shows this team was on the cusp of greatness (they did proceed to win 10 straight Bundesliga titles all the way until this season). That can’t be said about this Bayern side.
As everyone already knows, this Bayern side completely choked away the cup competitions after the firing of Julian Nagglesman as they lost 2-1 to the 5th-placed SC Friedburg in the DFB-Poktal Quarterfinals, while they got absolutely destroyed 4-1 by Manchester City in the Champions League Quarterfinals.
Bayern really didn’t like the quarterfinals too much this season, right?
Okay, being serious, I can see Bayern losing to Man City in the CL as it seems like City will actually pull off the incredible treble feat as they have already wrapped up the Premier League title race, they are playing Manchester United (4th in the Premier League) in the FA Cup Final, and they are playing Inter Milan (3rd place in Serie A) in the Champions League Final.
And I can even understand a one-off bad cup game against a decent side like Friedburg.
However, what’s completely inexcusable is this Bayern side’s complete collapse in the Bundesliga. Ever since Thomas Tuchel was appointed manager of Munich on March 25th, Bayern have won just four league matches, have drawn a game (have drawn twice in all comps. under Tuchel), and have lost two (have lost four matches in all comps. under Tuchel) crucial matches against Mainz (3-1 Mainz win) and now RB Leipzig (3-1).
As I’ve said all season long, this Bayern side lacks any resemblance of potency in front of goal when facing off against decent Bundesliga sides, such as Mainz (currently 8th) and RB Leipzig (currently 3rd).
It’s great this team can rack up 5-7 goals against the likes of Schalke (currently 18th), Werder Bremen (currently 12th), and Augsburg (currently 14th) when they can barely score a goal of their own, but all those meaningless goals amount for nothing when Bayern can only manager a goal against Mainz and Leipzig.
This team truly did not recover from the loss of Robert Lewandowski to Barcelona late in the summer transfer window, but the firing of Julian Nagglesman seems to have destroyed any resemblance of a champion left in this team.
We’ll have to wait and see on the final matchday of the Bundesliga season this coming weekend, but I don’t think Dortmund will blow yet another opportunity to claim a title over Bayern Munich.
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