Champions League
September 15, 2009
"This year will be harder than all the others if we want to win this competition," said Bayern Munich President Karl-Heinz Rummenigge on Monday.
That might sound like caution, but this is Bayern Munich talking. The tournament's group stage hasn't even started, and already Rummenigge is talking about winning it all.
It's been this way for years – Bayern begin their Champions League campaign with an eye on silverware, other German sides talk about making it out of their group.
Some say the difference in expectation stems from arrogance, but this year it seems well-founded. Not because Bayern are in such good form, but because Stuttgart and Wolfsburg are finding results hard to come by.
A dip in form or more?
Wolfsburg came into the season looking fluid in polishing off Stuttgart and Cologne, but they have lost their way in recent weeks, dropping three matches on the trot. They can take a bit of confidence out of their last match against Leverkusen, however, in which they fought back from 3-0 to lose by just one goal.
"It was very unfortunate we didn't beat Leverkusen," said Brazilian striker Grafite. "We needed a confidence booster and we need to work hard to get out of this bad phase. We have the quality to achieve that."
The German champions ought to have enough quality to match up at home to last year's Russian league runners-up, CSKA Moscow. The club is in a state of flux at the moment, having fired their old coach, Brazilian midfield legend Zico, while sitting in third place. Management at the old Red Army club says, however, that they had to fire Zico because the players didn't much like him, and because they had reached a deal with the man they had wanted for close to a year now: Juande Ramos, lately of Real Madrid.
Stranded on the launch pad
Stuttgart, meanwhile, have simply not gotten off the ground this season. The team's attack has - naturally - suffered in the wake of the sale of Mario Gomez to Bayern, but the addition of Aliaksandr Hleb and Pavel Pogrebnyak ought to have helped plug that hole.
Unfortunately for Stuttgart, the offense has only really convinced in one league game thus far, a 4-2 dismantling of the game-but-naive Freiburg.
Defensively, though, the team looks fairly sharp. They've ground out draws with Dortmund and Nuremburg when nothing was going on up front, and were simply overpowered by a rampant Hamburg on the weekend – a fate that has befallen many teams lately.
In that Scottish sides are not well-known for their offensive game plans (or good results) away from home, Stuttgart's energetic defense should be enough to get them a win against Rangers on Wednesday.
Firing on all cylinders
After a shaky start to the season, Bayern suddenly look steady, and potent in attack. Arjen Robben appers to have been a great buy, Franck Ribery has turned off the stream of unsettled quotes and turned on the scoring, and the team is getting standout performances from less expected quarters too.
Last week, Bastian Schweinsteiger's form crisis was a lead topic in the German press. This onetime of the golden boy of the 2006 World Cup, a player most had expected to rise into the international elite, had instead stalled at the solid-but-unspectacular level.
But on Saturday in Dortmund, it was Schweinsteiger's time to answer his critics. His goal, which took Bayern up 2-1, changed the match and led to the eventual 5-1 result.
Moreover, 20-year-old Thomas Mueller appears as if he may make the breakthrough for Bayern. Despite the club's good youth system and free spending on players young as well as old, Bayern has a reputation for squelching the dreams of youngsters hoping to make the leap to becoming regulars in the senior side.
In recent years alone, Bayern has sent packing, perhaps too soon, the likes of Piotr Trochowski, Zvejdan Misimovic, Toni Kroos and Mats Hummels – who, now at Dortmund, scored against Bayern on Saturday.
That their new manager, Louis van Gaal, is being patient with Mueller – and that Mueller is repaying him with goals – can only be a good sign for the club.
It's also a relief that Bayern is starting their Champions League campaign away to one of the weakest sides in the field. Barring a big surprise, Israeli league leaders Maccabi Haifa are there to make up the numbers.
Their coach, Elisha Levy, has tried to put a brave face on Tuesday night's encounter, saying his team "isn't going to hide from anyone."
That may mean a few minutes less before Bayern start scoring.
Author: Matt Hermann
Editor: Nancy Isenson