harm from boredom
Philipp Lahm warns FC Bayern
4/29/2022, 5:18 p.m
Philipp Lahm has won everything with FC Bayern. Now the Munich icon is warning the record champions about the lack of competition in Germany. This makes Bayern comfortable, which leads to poor performance in the Champions League.
According to former world champion Philipp Lahm, the lack of competition at home could weaken FC Bayern Munich in international comparison. “Perhaps this process is already underway,” Lahm wrote in a column for the newspaper “Zeit”.
The 38-year-old referred to Bayern’s performance in the Champions League over the past twelve years. “From 2010 to 2016 he reached the semi-finals six times and the final three times in seven attempts. However, from 2017 to 2022 he only made it into the last four twice out of six.” This season, Munich were eliminated for the second time in a row before the semi-finals.
In the Bundesliga, however, the Munich team celebrated their tenth title in a row. “Such statistics are otherwise only known from Skonto Riga, Dinamo Zagreb, Rosenborg Trondheim or Dynamo Berlin from the GDR Oberliga,” said Lahm.
“Lead allows him periods of weakness”
That also makes the situation for FC Bayern comfortable. “Because the national competition is not up to the international competition, he benefits like no other in Germany from the economic growth in European top football,” said Lahm. “Hardly anyone else bids for the players he wants. His huge lead even allows him weak phases.”
With a modern stadium, a great city and many fans, FC Bayern has “everything that helps with success”. Actually, there are enough locations in Germany with similar potential. “But HSV borrowed money from the fans and were relegated like Schalke, Frankfurt, Berlin and Cologne. Dortmund almost went bankrupt two decades ago, depending on a drip from Bayern Munich.” And so the Bundesliga, the second financially strongest league in the world, has been waiting since 1997 for someone other than Bayern to win a European Cup.