2023-08-18 18:01:07
Hello football summer slump – where were you hiding? At least not in Australia and New Zealand at the Women’s World Cup. And also not in small news columns of particularly agitated media. The tabloids were not the only ones tossed about in the headlines about FC Bayern’s increasingly desperate wooing of the alleged messiah himself: Harry Kane, 30, early retirement age, international top-class center forward made in England. Cost point: 220 million euros – including the agency fees incurred for Papa Pat and brother Charlie and a four-year contract worth a hundred million euros. Or pounds. In the end, the currency no longer mattered.
World star Sadio Mané chased from the court, Harry Kane is celebrated
The madness is hope and program at the same time. Just like a year ago the alleged world star Sadio Mané was celebrated by audiences and media like a hero from another galaxy – before he was chased from the farm like a beggar a year later – Kane is now faring. The expectations of the 30-year-old center forward could not be greater. He should not only help Bayern to the countless title in a row, but also make the whole old Bundesliga look sexy again all over the world.
Far away from home, she hasn’t been that for a long time. The ongoing outperformance of well-managed clubs from Heidenheim, Darmstadt, Berlin-Köpenick, Augsburg, Mainz, Bochum, plus the investor-pampered Wolfsburg, Leverkusen, Leipzig and Hoffenheim ensure that the former football province has spread in the German elite league. With correspondingly negative effects on an internationally perceived value, but also with shrinking national interest. In some parts, this pulls off a prominent second division with large traditional clubs from Berlin-Charlottenburg, Hamburg, Hanover, Nuremberg, Düsseldorf and Gelsenkirchen.
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The continuing convenience of the Bundesliga makes matters worse: while the English Premier League successfully organizes summer tournaments with half a dozen teams in Asia and the USA for marketing reasons, only Bayern and Dortmund made it overseas from the German elite class in the summer of 2023. The rest of the rest preferred to take a leisurely cure in Austria and the surrounding area.
The two national industry leaders react with displeasure. Already in the spring of a heated debate about a billion-dollar deal with an investor, you felt you weren’t getting enough support from the little ones in the industry. The basement children of the Bundesliga and the majority of the second division refused to increase their dwindling wealth with a great uncle Dagobert, but would first have to pay generously for it.
Leading league managers have identified a veritable crisis of confidence. What is left of the Bundesliga social system, in only homeopathic doses anyway, is on the brink. Because Bayern are champions even in years of maximum creative crisis, they look all the more that they can still halfway gallop with the dwindling competition in Europe – in the slipstream Dortmund, Leipzig behind, maybe soon Frankfurt if Eintracht continues as cleverly as last time . The rest of the herd follows at a slow trot.
Good for the clubs: there was no post-pandemic blues. Quite the opposite: the fans are pounding the clubs like there’s no tomorrow. Bad for the clubs: The penalties imposed by the German Football Association for setting off fireworks are higher than ever: almost seven million euros. Worrying about the future: the pay providers Sky and Dazn have recognizable problems refinancing their billion-euro investments. Because the audience is not completely stupid and refuses to pay moon prices for football broadcasts.
Especially since the professionals filled their pockets like never before, even in the darkest Corona times. Which also has to do with the fact that some of the most powerful internationally operating consulting agencies operate from Germany. The player values, which the leaders of the industry manage, have grown in spheres just under or even over half a billion euros, orders of magnitude with which the local medium-sized Bundesliga clubs can not even remotely keep up. Weights are shifting accordingly: earnest money and consultant fees are growing like weeds. The power of football professionals and their agents is growing inexorably.
The recognition of the referees continues to shrink
The recognition of the referees is shrinking meanwhile. Because the video assistance system (VAR) introduced in the Bundesliga in 2017 seems to work worse game year after game year, also because errors in social networks are relentlessly gutted. The VAR leaves the majority of fans, media and that part of the coaching community with a lack of tolerance for frustration increasingly fuming. The referees, meanwhile, suffer in silence and feel that they can never, ever live up to the expectations of robotic infallibility. But you should also know that an improved overall performance is urgently recommended. Which, of course, applies to the whole league and both frighteningly starving senior national teams.
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