Bundesliga 2010/11 – Can Anyone Challenge Bayern Munich?

18 Aug, 2010 Geoff Edwards Europe, Germany, Latest

With the Bundesliga 2010/2011 season upon us and Bayern Munich’s players now back from a pretty good World Cup all round, our German football meister Geoff Edwards asks – who can stop FC Hollywood?

If you like a flutter but prefer to keep it safe and relatively risk-free, placing some of your hard-earned cash on Bayern Munich to win the Bundesliga would be right down your ‘strasse’. Every year it is the same, as pundits and fans all over Germany predict that ‘FC Hollywood’ will dispatch their competition with ease – and not without good reason. The financial behemoth of the Bundesliga, Germany’s most famous club, have picked up 8 league titles from the last 12, a feat made even more impressive by the fact that in 6 of those campaigns they also won the double.

This season will be no different. In the minds of many, Bayern have already as good as won the title. They boast by a fair distance the most talented squad in the Bundesliga. In a league of highly promising youngsters, with the odd world star a touch past his best thrown in for good measure, Louis van Gaal’s men are arguably the only Bundesliga squad to be in possession of genuine world class talent at the peak of its powers. Stars such as Philipp Lahm, Bastian Scwheinsteiger, Franck Ribery and Arjen Robben look set to spend their best years at the Allianz Arena.

Bayern’s stellar squad will also have a distinctly youthful flavour this season. Having traditionally been a club where youth prospects have had a tough time breaking through, that seems to be changing under van Gaal. Thomas Müller, Holger Badstuber and 20 year-old German/Italian left back Diego Contento, were all given substantial chances under van Gaal in 2009-10, and that looks set to continue, as the coach has announced that Contento will be Bayern’s first-choice left back for 2010-11. 18 year-old midfielder David Alaba, who looked impressive for Austria in the recent European U19 Championships and can also operate at left-back, will also be knocking firmly on the door for more than the 3 first team appearances he made last season.

Perhaps most importantly of all, Bayern now seem settled. They started 2009-10 poorly as senior players took time to adapt to van Gaal’s philosophy, and van Gaal struggled to decide on his best team. Such worries should be nowhere in sight this time around, as the German ‘Rekordmeister’ (record championship winners) are settled in a 4-2-3-1 system where there is cover for every position.

Bayern fans will hope this will enable their team to hit the ground running in their first match of the season at home to Vfl Wolfsburg on 20 August, and avoid the turgid draws and unexpected defeats that characterised the first 2 or 3 months of 2009-10, which nearly costed van Gaal his job, before a 4-1 Champions League victory away to Juventus set him and his team on their way to within a whisker of a historic treble.

Hope for Bayern’s Challengers

Whilst on the surface everything appears rosy in Munich, a deeper look suggests Bayern may not have things all their own way. Success is not without its drawbacks. The price to pay for possessing such a star-studded squad was, in van Gaal’s case, losing many of them for weeks into pre-season preparation as they recovered from heavy World Cup exertions. In fact, only 9 senior players reported back for pre-season training on 15 July, and the squad was not fully reunited until 2 August. Hardly the ideal preparation for a club in the hunt for 3 trophies.

Further hope for Bayern’s challengers lies at the heart of their defence. Anyone who witnessed the Champions League final and Argentina’s World Cup campaign will know that Daniel van Buyten and Martin Demichelis are a far from dependable centre-half pairing. The former looked lost against Inter’s Diego Milito in Madrid, while the latter’s form was so poor for Argentina in South Africa that he appears to have lost his place as first choice to Badstuber, who himself has little central defensive experience in the Bundesliga.

Further up the pitch, there are issues surrounding Bayern’s two flying wingers. Arjen Robben will miss the first two months of the season with a recurrence of a hamstring injury suffered before the World Cup, whilst it remains to be seen how the French underage prostitute scandal will affect Franck Ribery’s performance. Whilst the likes of Hamit Altintop, Thomas Mueller and fantasista Toni Kroos can operate on the flanks, they can’t provide that natural pace and width that Robben and Ribery offer when on song.

Will all this be enough to give Bayern’s challengers a chance? Well, it will depend on how quickly they can get their houses in order before the closing of the transfer window on 31 August.

Probably the best-equipped to halt a potential Bayern romp are Bayer Leverkusen, FC Schalke 04 and Vfl Wolfsburg, but all have sizeable obstacles to overcome before they can lay a credible claim to be genuine challengers.

Leverkusen will have to prove they have the mental fortitude to keep going to the end, something they have failed to do in the past, most notably last season, and something they no doubt hope the re-signing of Michael Ballack will enable.

At Schalke, Felix Magath, the Bundesliga’s great alchemist, will have his work very much cut out to knit together a squad that has lost Kevin Kuranyi (to Dynamo Moscow), Heiko Westermann (to Hamburger SV), Marcelo Bordon (to Al Rayyan) and Rafinha (to Genoa), and gained, among others, Raul and Christophe Metzelder (he of only 23 appearances in 3 years at Real Madrid).

Despite the excellent signings of Arne Friedrich and Simon Kjaer, Steve McClaren’s Wolfsburg may have to contend with breaking up the ‘Holy Trinity’ (Edin Dzeko, Grafite, Zvjezdan Misimovic) from their 2009 title win, who are all looking for a way out of the club. If one or more of them do leave, the Wolves could be left with a similar remodelling job to Schalke on their hands.

Of course, this is all conjecture, and there is every chance a team could spring almost out of nowhere to grab the spoils, just as Wolfsburg did in 2009. The one certainty we are left with is probably the only certainty about Bundesliga football: whatever happens between now and May, it’s sure to be highly exciting.

(pic via winklerw on Flickr)

Arjen Robben, Arne Friedrich, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Bayer Leverkusen, Christophe Metzelder, Daniel van Buyten, David Alaba, Diego Contento, Diego Milito, Edin Dzeko, Felix Magath, Franck Ribery, German Bundesliga, German Football, Germany, Grafite, Hamit Altintop, Heiko Westermann, Holger Badstuber, Kevin Kuranyi, Louis Van Gaal, Marcelo Bordon, Martin Demichelis, Michael Ballack, Philipp Lahm, Rafinha, Raul, Schalke 04, Simon Kjaer, Thomas Muller, Toni Kroos, Vfl Wolfsburg, Zvjezdan Misimovic

There is no related post.

Share This Post!

About Geoff Edwards

9 Comments

bibi
August 19, 2010 • 12:01 am

Demichelis didn’t do poorly during the world cup. And it’s not said that he has lost the first spot. All the coach said is that he wants to work with Badstuber. Whoever (Van buyten, demichelis, breno) will play best with him will make the first squad. This is a process. And considering the past seven years I bet he’s got a good chance. Last Season, aside from the champions league final (where the entire team sucked btw only the slip in the defence is remembers as always), they did better when he was on the pitch.
Little statistics because the assuming of press and bloggers starts to piss me off.

In the match against Germany, Demichelis completed all 51 passes he attempted–the second-most by a player with 100% passing accuracy in World Cup history. He is runner up to Paul Breitner, who completed 100% of his 57 passes against Chile in a group stage match in 1974.

o Micho has played the full 5 matches, making a total of 450 minutes. The only defenders who have played for considerably longer are the Paraguayans, Morel and da Silva.
o Demichelis has the 24th highest pass accuracy (86%) out of all players this World Cup so far, taking no account of matches played. When compared to other players who have played the full 5 matches he comes in fourth place. To put it in perspective, 7 of the top ten whith the highest pass accuracy have played only 90 minutes or less, and the whole top four have played less than one game between them. The top 5 have only played one game, and out of the 23 who rank higher than Demichelis, 14 have a total play time of less than one game, and only 3 of them have played the full 450 minutes. (The majority of the others are very significantly off, with only Puyol, Pique, Silva, Juan, Demichelis and Busquets having played over 400 minutes.) Only six of the other players on the list out of these 24 have completed more passes than Micho, and the top four have only completed ten passes between them in comparison to Micho who completed 236, and the highest out of these 24 is Busquets, who has completed an astonishing 351 passes.
o He has directly saved one goal this tournament.
o By Castrol, Demichelis was also the highest-ranked Argentinain defender in the ARG-GER game, and the highest ranked overall defender in the ARG-KOR game. In the ARG-NGA game he was the second highest ranked player overall after Heinze, including forwards and midfielders.
o Demichelis is the Argentinan defender who holds his position most frequently, spending almost all his time in their half.
o He has covered a total distance of 41.00 km, the highest being the Ghanian player, Anthony Annan with 58.86. Demichelis has covered the highest distance out of Argentina’s defenders, and the third highest out of all their players after Maxi and Messi.
o Demichelis is the defender with the second lowest disciplinary record in the World Cup after Paraguayan Paulo da Silva, having conceded only 2 fouls and no cards. He is 14th lowest in total, and the majority of players who rank lower are goalkeepers.
o So far in the World Cup, Demichelis is ranked 16th by the Castrol index–the highest ranked Argentinan player. This rank is likely to fall as other teams who are still in the competition succeed him.
Jonathan F
August 20, 2010 • 12:20 am

Great article Geoff. Bayern will always be the favourites, but as you say the Bundesliga is an exciting league and it always has challengers to take the title race down to the wire. Always such an open league. I know you’ve only previewed the title race, but as an aside I am sad to see Aristide Bance leave Mainz – enjoyed watching Mainz a lot last season and he was a big part of that team.

Back onto the title race though, of the teams you mention I’m somewhat doubtful that Leverkusen will challenge as strongly as last year, even with Ballack (prior to their collapse). No Kroos is a loss and I think other teams will emerge stronger, Hamburg potentially one of them.
Geoff
August 21, 2010 • 10:11 am

Bibi, Jonathan, thanks for comments, which contain some excellent points.

@Bibi, I wasn’t trying to paint Demichelis as a bad player, just that he’s out of sorts at the moment. It seems that van Gaal’s choice of starting line-up last night would bear this out. Thanks for providing the stats, which are very thought provoking, but don’t tell the whole story. Where are the stats on positioning and decision making? There are a number of examples from last season where Demichelis was found wanting in this area I believe, such as against Man U in the CL, and Korea, Mex and Ger in the WC.

@Jonathan, you’re right Bance will be a huge miss for Mainz. His loss will be a test for coach Thomas Tuchel, who I rate very highly. They have signed Morten Rasmussen from Celtic to replace him. Haven’t seen much of him I’m afraid so can’t really comment on how well I think he’ll do. They also have Sami Allagui, just signed from Greuther Furth in the 2nd division. He had a good record at that level, and is in the right place to give him the platform to make the step up.

Re Leverkusen, we’ll have to agree to disagree! I think the loss of Kroos will be offset by the returns of Ballack and Renato Augusto, along with back up of youngsters such as Burak Kaplan, Sidney Sam and Marcel Risse. We’ll see.
- Jonathan F
  August 23, 2010 • 11:35 pm
  
  Sidney Sam is a player I’m looking to learning more about.
Geoff
August 21, 2010 • 7:55 pm

@Jonathan, I also forgot to address your point about Hamburg. If they reach the level they did today against Schalke, they’ll have a very good season. They dominated and could’ve won by more thanm 2-1.