The 52nd Bundesliga season kicks off on Friday night with a new slogan: “The league of the world champions.”
That, at least, is how its major broadcasters are billing it, keying into Germany’s summer triumph in Brazil. They sense the World Cup momentum should be productive, in terms of the Bundesliga’s general esteem, for viewing figures and spectator attendance, though the latter has been on the rise for several years.
The number of fans who pour into the German top flight’s high-spec stadiums each weekend, paying ticket prices that seem more than reasonable compared with other leading European leagues, is one of the Bundesliga’s major virtues.
The victory in the Maracana last month has also endorsed the idea that this is a domestic structure that encourages good technique and enterprising football.
“It’s no coincidence that after the joint efforts of everybody in German football since the turn of the century we achieved what we did in Rio,” said Christian Seifert, chief executive of the Bundesliga.
Just as Joachim Loew, the national team coach, was quick to praise the rigorous work of German club academies during the past 14 years in supplying native talent to his squad, and the youth teams that underpin it, so the Bundesliga now wants to ride the wave from the national team’s 1-0 World Cup final win over Argentina in Rio de Janeiro.
The likes of Mario Gotze, scorer of the winning goal in the Rio final, and goalkeeper Manuel Neuer are bigger global stars than they were two months ago, which has a knock-on effect. Overseas TV sales are increasingly important for major leagues and the Bundesliga will earn nearly €70 million (Dh341.5m) from them this season, almost 10 per cent of its broadcast income.
Another procession for Bayern Munich?
Fans get a good rate of goals per game in the Bundesliga. But how much suspense the title race can offer a growing fan base is open to question, given the ease with which Bayern Munich sealed the last two championships.
The connection between the Germany who beat Argentina and the Bayern who hold the Club World Cup, Bundesliga and German Cup titles is pronounced, from Gotze to Thomas Muller, who hit five goals in the tournament, to Neuer, the acrobatic goalkeeper whose status as the world’s best in his position was promoted by his displays in Brazil.
Bayern’s captain, Philipp Lahm, lifted the prize in what has turned out to be his last cap, as he has retired from international duty.
Lahm has no worry about leaving a leadership void; his Bayern teammate Bastian Schweinsteiger showed plenty of commanding qualities in Brazil.
But as the giants from Munich prepare to usher the season in, draped in medals, against Wolfsburg on Friday, the World Cup casts a shadow as well as a sheen.
Pep Guardiola, the Bayern coach, said on Thursday he expected the coming months to “be very, very hard”. He has sounded a little like a man with a more distinct view of World Cup payback than Seifert’s as he prepares the defence of the Bundesliga Shield.
“We are far from top fitness,” Guardiola said of a squad from which seven players were involved in the World Cup until the last weekend of the tournament, and so missed much of the club’s pre-season.
“It’s not an inevitability that we win the league,” said Franz Beckenbauer, noting that the club he played for, coached and is honorary president of, have never followed up a German, or West German, World Cup win with the championship the next season.
Injuries as well as potential fatigue vex Guardiola. Schweinsteiger, Spaniards Javi Martinez and Thiago Alcantara and French winger Franck Ribery all have physical problems and, unusually, Bayern were outspent in the transfer market.
Only striker Robert Lewandowski, Pepe Reina – back-up to Neuer – and Juan Benat, the young Spanish winger, are significant additions to a squad that has lost Toni Kroos, the best passer last season for Bayern, who has left for Real Madrid, and centre-forward Mario Mandzukic, who is now at Atletico Madrid.
Borussia Dortmund, runners-up the past two seasons, splashed out more heavily than Bayern to replace Lewandowski with Ciro Immobile, the Italy striker, and recruit defender Matthias Ginter and forward Adrian Ramos.
Financial Fair Play is a double-edged sword
Immobile is one of several intriguing arrivals, his capture a notable feather in the cap of German football in that the leading scorer in last season’s Serie A has moved to the Bundesliga from Torino, not to a bigger Italian club.
But overall, the spending in Germany remains modest compared with the English Premier League or the sums invested on new players by Real Madrid and Barcelona. Ten days ahead of the closing of the window, the Bundesliga clubs had spent only €110m; the Spanish Primera Liga and the Premier League have each reached towards a €400m outlay.
The Bundesliga is proud of its general abstemiousness in that sense, its balance between nurturing young talent and hiring the best from elsewhere. Its clubs are mostly protected from the pitfalls of reckless spending.
The standard German ownership model, which forbids most clubs from having a majority single shareholder, is hailed as a sound one by those who also laud Uefa’s Financial Fair Play initiatives.
But it means the Bundesliga is not home to the sorts of super-rich patrons who have altered the landscape of elite European football in the past decade, taking over the likes of Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City, all now major contenders in their domestic leagues and in the Uefa Champions League.
Might the Bundesliga benefit from the kind of shake-up an ambitious outsider could bring?
Wolfsburg hinted at that when they won the title in 2009. They have the backing of Volkswagen and a different ownership model because of their traditional ties to the automobile manufacturer. They could not repeat that triumph and will not do so this season, but another corporate juggernaut is intent on challenging the status quo.
While Bayern’s progress over the season will intrigue, while Dortmund are certain to be very watchable and while Hamburg are liable to be jittery after their close shave with relegation, keep an eye out for Red Bull Leipzig.
They have just been promoted to the second division, are financed by the Red Bull multinational group and have been spending big to gain promotion to the top flight.
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