With an 8-0 win over Hamburg, Bayern Munich are once demonstrating their absolute dominance over the rest of the German Bundesliga, and that one loss to the so-called contenders isn’t really changing the balance of the league.
A 4-1 loss to Wolfsburg, their first in the league this season, was followed by drawing at home with Schalke. Crisis? An actual open challenge for the title? Not when a team from a huge city like Hamburg that has the potential to be a consistent threat for European spots is just another of a long list of “big” clubs that find themselves battling for survival.
So goals came from Thomas Muller, and Mario Gotze, and Arjen Robben, Robert Lewandowski and Franck Ribery. The Allianz Arena was rocking. Celebration in the air. Champions League coming soon. So is another league title, their third in a row, without anyone really putting up some sort of fight.
Dortmund used to be that one thing Bayern were afraid of, but they’re dealing with different problems now. Wolfsburg might be here for one season, but this isn’t going to last for long. Leverkusen are an excellent example of consistency at being good but nothing more. There’s no long term competition, not a real one, to the most profitable club in the world.
And as long as that financial success is translated by smart front office personnel into the right decisions on the pitch, the German Bundesliga is more or less a tournament with a known and predictable ending almost every season, for now and the foreseeable future.