Bayern Munich: What's down is up

While listening to the lastest ESPNFC podcast, Iain Macintosh threw in an interesting posit on German football that deserves some investigation.

His theory, which is his, was that Bayern Munich win a few Bundesliga titles in a row, are unseated and then use this opportunity to reimagine themselves as a bigger and better club. Furthermore, he thought this provided hope for 2015 and beyond to shrewd local clubs with great youth development.

Taking a quick look at the list of German league champions reveals the basic mechanics of his dictum are correct: Bayern have won the league eleven of the past twenty seasons and look certain to do so again in 2014. Their longest title stretch spanned the three years from 1999 to 2001.

The flip side of this theory is that despite making the Champions’ League final in 2012 and winning it in 2013, this has actually already occurred and this is the more powerful incarnation of Bayern intimated by Macintosh.

Bayern’s past re-envisionings have come in the face of slip-ups (coughKlinsmanncough) or the local competition advancing their players or tactics beyond them. Looking back over seasons 2012-14, we can suggest playmaking and personnel developments at Borussia Dortmund was responsible for their title victories – meaning Bayern Munich’s success in the One Competition to Rule Them All actually occurred during some of their “down” years.

The logical progression from that position is that Pep Guardiola is actually not involved in the finishing steps of a rebuild, but the earlier ones.

The greater revenue brought about by Champions League success and the increasing importance of globalizing a club’s brand allows a club having a less successful local year (in which they proceed deep into European competition) to repopulate themselves with the likes of Mario Gotze and Robert Lewandowski. Such a large difference – such as a 4:1 spending difference over the past four years between the best two clubs in the nation – is increasingly hard to bridge with tactical and developmental innovation.

Macintosh’s dictum is a true statement. However when applied to the 2013-14 Bundesliga, it is less a statement of potential future challenges than a monochromatic commentary on the future of the Bundesliga.

Guardiola may not be Bayern Munich's Man of Steel

The new Superman movie, Man of Steel, does some things well.  It creates a plausible Superman back story, introduces a new dynamic into the Clark Kent/Lois Lane relationship and makes Kevin Costner somewhat likeable again after two decades of “meh”.  Despite making nearly $300,000,000 (or nearly three Gareth Bales) in its two-month run so far, the film pales in comparison with Superman and Superman II, movies made in the late 1970s directed by Richard Donner and Richard Lester.

MoS makes everything is more complex.  The stark, crystalline beauty of Krypton in the original films was turned by director Zack Snyder into George Lucas’ most lurid celluloid wet dreams as rideable flying lizards engaged troop carriers above a landscape seemingly composed only of mesas.  The Phantom Zone, the prison supposedly incarcerating Kryptonian antagonists is now a giant machine rather than a mirrored square of unknowable origin.  The film is visually more overwhelming, but rather than this making MoS a better movie, it shows up what shouldn’t have been attempted: redefining an iconic moment in film.

And this is the situation faced by Pep Guardiola as he takes over as head coach of German giants Bayern Munich.  He, the bright young director, has been charged with replacing Jupp Heynckes – one of the best managers in recent memory who in his last season led Bayern to a treble-winning season defined by masterful play and an intimidatingly balanced lineup.

Guardiola, like Snyder, has a preferred motif.  Rather than Pulis’ Sndyer’s wanton cyclic violence, Pep favours a possession game the likes of which the footballing world has rarely seen.  His Barcelona teams would regularly play keep-away for over 80% of their matches, moving their opponents marginally out of position again and again until fatal flaws became exposed.  However, Bayern’s outstanding past three seasons have been based upon a very different style: incision has come from Arjen Robben, Franck Ribery and Thomas Müller while bite has come from Bastian Schweinsteiger and Javi Martinez.

Barcelona’s triumphs were equated to “death by a thousand cuts”.  Bayern’s modus operandi was to take a scimitar and lop off the head.  Players like Schweinsteiger, Müller and Mario Götze are eminently capable of playing a ball-dominant style, does it suit them the way it did Xavi, Iniesta and Messi?

There’s every chance that despite significant talent upgrades (in the form of Götze and Thiago Alcantara) that Bayern fall short of last season’s lofty standards simply because of coaching.  That isn’t to say that Guardiola isn’t talented – he is – more that installing a coach who works rigidly in a fluid paradigm is a needless attempt at reinventing the wheel.  Heynckes orchestrated an epoch-defining team at die Roten was who will now be instantly re-booted. 

There is a time and a place for changing the artistic direction of a football club, but is that time immediately upon winning the European Cup and when the boss wants to stay?  Bayern were forced into signing Guardiola simply because he wasn’t likely to be available again any time soon.  The new man has claims at being the world’s best manager; but so too did the incumbent.  If Bayern had hoped to repeat as Champions League (and perhaps treble) winners, making such a massive adjustment to an iconic franchise may not be the best place to start.

Michael Ballack retires

Earlier this week, former Germany captain Michael Ballack retired from all professional football. The most stylish and (sometimes brutally) effective German player of his generation leaves the game permanently at age 36.

Ballack had both the fortune and misfortune of being born five years too late. To look at it another way, he was born five years too early. He could have been a precocious youngster alongside Lothar Matthäus, Jurgen Klinsmann and the greatest years of Oliver Kahn, but was born as the seventies turned. Born half a decade later and he wouldn't have just nurtured the startling Germany team of the home World Cup in 2006 but championed it. Instead, he scraped into the tail of one wonderful era and was moved on before the second blossomed.

In hindsight, this may actually have suited him. As the best player in the country, Ballack enjoyed starring roles at Bayer Leverkusen, Bayern Munich and for Die Mannschaft; after the success of 2006, he moved to Chelsea before concluding his career at Leverkusen. A man betraying precious little self-doubt, the spotlight rests easily on him. He was Germany: it wasn't a burden, just the way things were.

Courtesy: heraldsun.com.au

His polished – if not definitive – turn as an analyst for ESPN over the 2012 European Championships only highlighted his readiness to step away from the centre of midfield.

Michael Ballack rarely took a backwards step. And in a weird kind of way, that could be why his mooted move to Toronto FC or the fledgling Western Sydney Wanderers never really made it off the ground. Wage demands might have played a part, but had he wanted to keep playing the monetary terms could have been arranged. Some men are made to be ambassadors, but Michael Ballack just isn't one of them.

Sydney FC signee Alessandro Del Piero will be crucial to the A-League and football's growth in Australia. Without question, he is the best player to ever play in the Antipodes. Ballack is two years younger and fit a role which doesn't necessarily depend on speed. He could have owned the A-League; if Christian Tiffert makes such an impact in Seattle, how deadly would Michael Ballack be? However, doing so – even for reported millions – may have felt like a backward step. At 36, once usefulness at the very top level has been exhausted, the best players must accept a reduced role - one of venerable sage, goodwill ambassador or even figurehead.

Some athletes are engineered to keep going; Del Piero joins his English contemporary David Beckham as the most obvious examples. Ballack probably isn't wired that way, and that's fine – not many have the combination of talent, temperament and stamina to do so. The ultimate cost/benefit analysis all footballers face contrasts desire and depreciation. When that ratio dips too low, it's time to enter the tunnel for the final time.

Michael Ballack leaves the game on his own terms. It couldn't really have happened any other way. However, his luxuriant bouffant and measured analysis on ESPN suggests we will see a lot more of him in the future.