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Two German teams have reached the semi-finals of the Champions League, five Bundesliga teams will probably play in the reformed elite league next season, perhaps even six. That could be good for German football, but the opposite is to be feared.
FC Bayern and Borussia Dortmund are rightly in the semi-finals of the Champions League. The two teams were better than their opponents across both games in the quarterfinals.
Manchester City was better than Real Madrid, but was still eliminated because football is a game in which far fewer goals are scored than in handball or baskets are scored like in basketball.
Champions League, semi-finals arrow right Champions League, quarter-finals arrow right
The extremely rich Premier League no longer has a team in the top four in Europe. The gag that the English urgently need an investor in order not to lose touch internationally has been made hundreds of times.
Super rich and quite rich
It’s also nice to see that it’s not always the richest who are among themselves when it comes to the most important club trophy. Although – Borussia Dortmund will probably report sales of around half a billion euros for the current financial year.
FC Bayern is already in other spheres, having recently achieved 854 million euros. Real Madrid is heavily indebted, but it also has extremely high values to offset its liabilities. At Paris Saint-Germain, the football division of the State of Qatar, it is pointless to talk about money.
If you look at it soberly, the super-rich and the fairly rich from Germany are playing for the Champions League with the other super-rich from Europe.
There is even more money to be made in the coming season. BVB’s fear of not being allowed to take part due to their position in the Bundesliga is no longer as great as it was before the quarter-finals. It is likely that Germany will be awarded fifth place in the Champions League, which will initially be played as a league in the future. Theoretically, even a sixth participant is possible.
The big discrepancy is likely to get even bigger
These are wonderful prospects for German football – but only when viewed superficially. In the short term, but certainly in the medium term, it will continue to harm competition in the Bundesliga.
The current season is one of extremes. There is a 37-point gap between league leaders and champions Bayer Leverkusen and fifth-placed Eintracht Frankfurt. That’s more than there are in the 2nd league between leaders Holstein Kiel and the last-placed VfL Osnabrück (34).
Even if Leverkusen’s outstanding season is counted out as a singular event: FC Bayern also has 21 points more than Eintracht.
Munich, Dortmund and Leipzig have always been represented in the Champions League over the past five years, and they will – certainly or most likely – be in the coming season too. Leverkusen, which already has a large and distorting competitive advantage due to the exception rule at 50+1 and the tolerated loss compensation by the giant company, has been there three times in the last five years and will be there again next season.
The money that these clubs earn thanks to the elite league alone exceeds the sales of other clubs many times over. On paper, VfL Bochum is a league competitor, but in reality it is a necessary addition. The Bochum team even scored a lot of points against the five best teams in the Bundesliga. As the table below shows, only 1. FC Heidenheim scored more points against the top 5.
Games in the lower half of the table against the top 5 Club Games Points Goals 1. FC Heidenheim 9 9 15:19 Borussia Mönchengladbach 9 4 8:18 Werder Bremen 8 4 3:18 1. FC Union Berlin 9 0 2:22 VfL Wolfsburg 9 4 8 :18 VfL Bochum 9 8 7:26 1. FSV Mainz 05 9 5 8:23 1. FC Köln 10 1 2:27 SV Darmstadt 98 9 0 6:33
The bottom two in the table, SV Darmstadt 98 and 1. FC Köln, have only scored one point from 19 games so far (Cologne 1:1 at VfB Stuttgart) with a combined goal difference of 8:60.
1. FC Union Berlin didn’t score any at all with 2:22 goals. Union played in the Champions League in the group phase. In order to be able to keep up with the top teams or those that could be like VfL Wolfsburg because of their competitive advantage, the Berliners would have to make it to the Champions League several times.
Distribute money differently? There is no will for this
Or the money earned would have to be distributed differently. But even with the best will in the world, there is no apparent will to do so. Instead, there will be a Club World Cup in the future, at the first edition of which Germany will be represented by the super rich (FC Bayern) and the fairly rich (BVB).
A scramble that loses tension
This promotes their international competitiveness, but damages national competition, which even immediately suffers a little. The scramble for fifth place in the table, which includes the direct duel between RB Leipzig and Borussia Dortmund, is probably no longer important.