Champions League Final Does Not Mark Start of a German Era

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/25/sports/soccer/25iht-soccer25.html

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LONDON — Germany’s strength is all around us. Whether Bayern Munich or Borussia Dortmund prevails on English soil this Saturday evening, no one can deny that the Bundesliga has outplayed the rest of Europe this season.

The pair helped to take down the best of British this season, and each devastated a Spanish giant, Barcelona and Real Madrid, in the semifinals. Munich is the clear favorite after nine months of sustained omnipotence at home and abroad, yet Dortmund’s rise from near bankruptcy to this peak in just eight years has its appeal.

Seeing the order, the speed, the virility with which both play, it is hard to feel that either would not make a true champion of the Continent. Maybe sentiment is tilted toward the Dortmunders, if only because it might spike the hubris of Bayern’s booking the Great Room of the Grosvenor House Hotel for a celebration with 1,800 guests through Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Munich likes to party, though a week ago its coach, Jupp Heynckes, kept a more intimate rein on his players. He ended the season — and his own 50-year Bundesliga career as a player and trainer — with a “family” gathering with the players at his farmhouse near Gladbach.

Heynckes, 68, could leave Munich with a full house of trophies from the Bundelsiga, the Champions League and, next week, the German Cup final against Stuttgart in Berlin.

His successor, Pep Guardiola of Barcelona, has already started spending Bayern’s incomparable budget. If Guardiola can change anything in a team that has laid waste to virtually every opponent this season, always scoring and barely conceding, it will be in the department of creativity on the field.

To that end, Bayern is paying the €37 million, or $48 million, it took to activate a buyout clause in the contract of Dortmund’s most gifted homegrown player, Mario Götze. As fate would have it, Götze, who is now 20 but was raised by Borussia from the age of 8, cannot play at Wembley Stadium because of a thigh injury.

But this move, and the possibility that Munich could outbid Manchester United and Real Madrid to lure away Dortmund’s Polish striker Robert Lewandowski, does show that market forces and financial wealth are as persuasive in Germany as anywhere else.

That needs saying because there is a bandwagon rolling to sell the charms of the Bundesliga against the other powers in Europe right now. The English league, they say, is run by the money of sheiks and oligarchs and rich Americans. Spain has a league of two, Barça and Real, built on their monopoly of television income.

Those are facts. The Bundesliga, more closely bounded by financial compliance and built at least in part by supporter ownership, is arguably the most sustainable league in the world. Saturday night in London will most likely also show that it has plenty of young, dynamic players capable of pushing the national team toward the final places at the World Cup.

Yet it seems premature to declare Germany right now as the role model for the sport’s future.

Even if both of these finalists are built around German strength and reliability, the attacks are led by Mario Mandzukic, a Croatian, and Lewandowski, a Pole.

The midfield of Munich is powered by a combination of Bastian Schweinsteiger and the Spaniard Javi Martínez, and the wings belong to two wonderfully engaging characters, Arjen Robben from the Netherlands and Franck Ribéry of France.

What is true is that Munich blends the imports with its own youth products, none better than the stealth raider, Thomas Müller.

Dortmund does the same, on a lesser budget. Ever since it borrowed €2 million from Bayern to prevent its financial collapse in 2005 (and paid it back in good time) Dortmund has run one of the best youth policies in the country. Götze is a product of it, but Dortmund has also bought well. The best of those, Marco Reus, was purchased from Borussia Mönchengladbach, and his ability to move from midfield and strike goals is equivalent to Müller’s for Bayern.

So, unquestionably, Germany has done marvelous things since it looked hard at itself after an embarrassing failure at the Euro 2000 tournament. Its youth regeneration, its financial constraints, its huge audiences and its rules on financial accountability are rightly being trumpeted this weekend.

But still, it is presumptuous to call this the start of a new era of German domination.

It is the fourth time in the Champions League era that one nation has supplied both sides at the final. In 2000, Real Madrid beat Valencia in Paris. In 2003, Milan defeated Juventus on penalty kicks after a goalless 120 minutes at Old Trafford in Manchester. And in 2008, Manchester United beat Chelsea, also on penalty kicks, in Moscow.

None of those led to dynastic periods of one-country rule. Barcelona’s play, in unison with the Spanish national side, has been hypnotic to behold, and injuries including to Lionel Messi certainly weakened it against Munich.

But there is an abiding reason why Germany has arrived at this point: the teams’ response to pain. Anybody in Bayern’s camp speaks of losing the Champions League final in 2010 to Inter Milan, and last year to Chelsea.

The moment this season began, Heynckes used that losing feeling to goad his men. Every player — notably Ribéry and Robben — was made to realize that defense starts with the forwards and that by working back to support their colleagues and sprinting forward with license to show their skills, they are winners.

Dortmund is drilled according to similar notions, and has been since Jürgen Klopp became its trainer four years ago. In front of the cameras, Klopp is a joker, a commentator, a rent-a-quote personality. Watch his team run, and the sheer effort and determination stand out.

Weave that into your mind, and the picture presented by Kicker magazine after the semifinals sums it up: Its cover had the Champions trophy on the national flag and the words: Made in Germany.