The key to a more competitive Bundesliga lies in empowering the field, rather than holding Bayern Munich backBayern Munich have found a variety of different ways to become Bundesliga champions since 2013. This title, their ninth in a row, was sealed as the team arrived in the Allianz Arena’s home dressing room before the Saturday evening kick-off against Borussia Mönchengladbach.Bayern were virtual champions as they left the team hotel to get on the bus to the stadium just before 5pm local time, with Borussia Dortmund leading Bayern’s mathematical rivals RB Leipzig 2-1. As a number of players watched the game in the north-west unfold on their phones on the journey, Dani Olmo’s equaliser for future coach Julian Nagelsmann’s team meant...
Serial Bundesliga champions will judge their new manager not by titles but rather a handful of European knockout matches Julian Nagelsmann is 33. This summer, he will fulfil what always seemed his destiny and become manager of Bayern Munich, the club he supported as a boy growing up in Landsberg am Lech, the Bavarian town where a young Johnny Cash was stationed with the US air force. It is a story with an almost mythic quality: the young professional suffering serious knee injuries and committing himself to coaching, emerging as the brightest talent of the dominant German school. But this is where it gets real; this is where he has to win.Nagelsmann will face the problem common to all managers...
The club’s 33-year run in the top flight ended amid ugly scenes as fans turned on the players outside the Veltins-ArenaIt was all over bar the shouting, but there was plenty of shouting to come. Schalke had finally come to the end of the Bundesliga road at Arminia Bielefeld and though the final destination was not a surprise, it was still hard to take. Youth product Timo Becker wept on the bench and the general manager, Gerald Asamoah, a hero on the pitch in better times, only just held back his own tears in front of the television cameras.“We knew what to expect,” said Asamoah after relegation was confirmed. “But when the time finally comes, when you realise it’s now...
Hansi Flick is a players’ man and that meant his tenure at the club could not last longer than 18 exhilarating monthsIt had been a week heavy with a feeling of finality; first in Paris, then in Wolfsburg. Bayern Munich’s stride towards retaining the Champions League had come to a halt in the French capital, with Leon Goretzka’s withdrawal through injury perhaps the straw that broke the camel’s back in a campaign beset with personnel issues. Everything, this time, wasn’t enough.After everything that happened in the two legs with Paris Saint-Germain – the setbacks, the comebacks, the good-but-not-quite-ruthless-enough performances – it felt good to move on with a relative test against one of the Bundesliga’s surprise packages, and a likely...
Hansi Flick brought in new faces with Tuesday in mind but dropped points gave hope to RB Leipzig belowHansi Flick’s biggest expression of frustration on Saturday afternoon was saved for five minutes from the end of normal time, when a dogged Union Berlin pilfered a hardly inevitable but not exactly undeserved equaliser at the home of the champions, as Marcus Ingvartsen’s scuffed effort rolled over the line. In tandem with RB Leipzig’s easy 4-1 win at Werder Bremen, it trimmed Bayern Munich’s lead at the top of the Bundesliga to five points – an inconvenience rather than a crisis – but the keenest suggestion from hearing Flick shout “Mann!” across the turf was less the effect of the goal itself...