As we begin to question just how long Manchester City’s dominance will last in England, and perhaps the whole of Europe, over in Germany a decade-long era could be ending on Saturday – and very few saw this coming.
When the World Cup broke up domestic campaigns across the globe, in the Bundesliga the seemingly perennial winners Bayern Munich held a four-point lead at the top, with Borussia Dortmund nine points adrift in sixth.
But in the 18 games that have followed a mighty swing has seen Dortmund win 14 of those games, including a nine-match winning run from January to March, and despite a 4-2 defeat at Bayern on 1 April, it is Dortmund who hold a two-point advantage heading into the final round of matches on Saturday.
“The neutral football fan has been waiting a long time for this,” Didi Hamann tells i. “I think it will be good for the league. Everybody will be delighted apart from the Bayern fans if Dortmund wins it again.”
Bayern held the keys as recently as last weekend, but a 3-1 loss at home to RB Leipzig on Saturday was followed by Dortmund beating 10-man Augsburg 3-0 on Sunday.
It seems safe to say, therefore, that Bayern’s decision to replace Julian Nagelsmann with Thomas Tuchel has backfired, with the latter experiencing a forgetful spell despite starting with that win over Dortmund.
What followed was a DFB-Pokal exit to SC Freiburg three days later, a 4-1 aggregate defeat to Manchester City in the Champions League that same month, and eight points dropped in the Bundesliga since 15 April. Enough to give Dortmund the edge.
“Bayern just made too many mistakes and dropped too many points,” says Hamann, who started his career at Bayern before joining Newcastle in 1998. “They decided to change the manager a few weeks ago, and if anything it only got worse since then. He lost more in 11 games than the previous manager in 37.
“They had their reasons and they still stand by it. Obviously they won’t say. If they knew what would happen, maybe they would have waited until the end of the season. I think they wouldn’t have done it, they expected things to pick up but they didn’t.
“I think they were a bit worried Tuchel might not be available come the end of the season. That’s why they maybe rushed it a little bit.”
And from what Hamann knows, former Chelsea boss Tuchel may well be the only senior non-playing member of staff at Bayern whose job isn’t under threat if the Bundesliga evades them this weekend.
“The fans are bit disillusioned and disheartened,” says Hamann. “They felt they lost a bit of identity which was always a big part of Bayern Munich, so it will be interesting because the supervisory board have a meeting sometime next week, and it will be interesting to see what they do.
“What I’ve been told is that Tuchel is apparently the only one not under threat. [Bayern CEO Oliver] Kahn and [sporting director Hasan] Salihamidzic might be, he’s not. But you can’t take him out of the criticism, because after the first game at the Etihad he said he fell in love with this team, then at home he said they had him on the ropes.
“I felt Man City never got out of second gear in Munich, and then Bayern lost three or four days later and Tuchel said he didn’t know what to say, ‘I don’t know what happened today.’
“So you’ve gone from falling in love with the team to being helpless or not knowing what the reasons are in the space of 10 days, so that can’t be right. He lost four important games, he’s about to lose all three titles. He came to win one or two, maybe even three – the gap to Man City was probably too big – but apparently he’s staying, although questions have to be asked.”
And what of Dortmund then, arguably the more vital component of this late title twist who are looking to break the Bayern wheel and ascend to the throne of German football.
Jude Bellingham, the Real Madrid-bound 19-year-old, may well be the poster boy of this Dortmund side, especially with English-tinted specs on – he does after all leads the way with 12 goals this season – but following close behind is a man whose season only started in January.
“The whole football world was in shock last summer when Sebastien Haller was diagnosed with testicular cancer, and he was out for the first half of the season,” Hamann adds. “He came back, he started his recovery and doing his pre-season after the World Cup, and then he probably came back quicker than people thought.
“It gave everybody a boost, not only on the football pitch but also emotionally he gave a lot of people hope who suffer from that terrible disease. Sometimes things are bigger than football, and this is one of them.
“Obviously Bayern Munich still had a part to play because they were nine points ahead after the World Cup when they resumed the season, but Haller was really the ‘X-factor’ because Karim Adeyemi started playing a lot better with him, because he creates a lot of space for the other players and always finds two or three defenders.
“Now he’s in the goals himself. Nine and three assists since he’s been back. It’s hard to put it down to one name but I think Haller played a huge role. What happened to him in the summer and the way he came back in January.”
It would make Dortmund popular winners, therefore, if they keep their noses in front on Saturday.
Win and the title, a first since 2011-12, is theirs.
“It would be a wonderful story if they can top it off on Saturday,” adds Hamann.
“100 per cent. When these things happen in football, the football world comes together. Unfortunately we’ve seen in Spain the terrible side of football, but usually when these things happen the football world comes together, and that was the case with Haller.”
Didi Hamann was talking to i courtesy of Casinos En Ligne
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