Many German words have made careers in foreign languages. Angst and Kindergarten in English, Schnitzel and Strudel in Romanian, Field Marshal and Kajüte in Polish, there are hundreds of other examples. It is astonishing that neither the technical term “Bayern-Dusel” nor its derivation, “Die Dusel-Bayern”, have found international distribution. Linguists and other scholars have yet to figure out why. Perhaps because the words express a not atypical German form of resentment and were possibly invented by jealous hammers or even decades ago by Willi Lemke? The FC Bayern camp is convinced of this. The doctrine there is: We didn’t need any luck to realize the programmatic fan anthem “Forever Number One”. Everything worked hard.
The final tournament in Lisbon, which FC Bayern has now won 1-0 against Paris Saint-Germain with an undisputedly happy, but also undeniably deserved one, was unsuitable for bringing the term Bayern-Dusel into the world. Munich have won all eleven Champions League games since September last year, Chelsea were dealt 7-1 in the two-part round of 16, FC Barcelona hit an abyss 8-2 in the quarter-finals, and Olympique Lyon were defeated 3-0 in the semifinals . In the European Cup, conditions prevailed that have been lamented in the Bundesliga for years, and there are already statements from experts who prophesy that Munich will dominate in Europe and overseas as it does at home. “On the way to perhaps the biggest club in the world”, Thomas Tuchel sees the opponent from the final day, and if that was perhaps a somewhat selfishly motivated compliment, there is a lot of truth in it.
FC Bayern has long been a big club, but it has probably never been as big and powerful as it is now in the course of its success story. Not only was he able to win the Champions League by marching through, he also seems strong enough to defy the Corona crisis with his economic power. Other giants are shaken by the pandemic turning point. The constant opponents FC Barcelona and Real Madrid, whose popularity and charisma even the Bayern bosses considered superior, can hardly breathe in the current economic downturn that will last for an indefinite period of time: Extreme maintenance costs for the players, high debts and sporting mismanagement – that’s even for them these Rolls-Royce clubs are an oppressive mix (of course, they will continue as before).
It is not as if Bayern do not make investments from the crazy realm of “Fantasy Football” every now and then and have cadre costs that spoil the fun for their national competitors. However, you can afford it. They managed to keep up with the times while preserving the traditional club culture. The highest possible professional standards combine the two spheres, this club is “a machine with a heart”, says the philosopher Jorge Valdano.
On the one hand, FC Bayern has become a modern corporate business company and, on the other hand, it has remained the old football club. Here the perfect marketing in the style of the US sports industry that makes you shiver – there the traditional rulers Uli (Hoeneß) and Kalle (Rummenigge), now separated by inscrutable feuds, but inseparable in their FC Bayern commitment. On Sunday they stood next to each other and looked at their successors: Hasan Salihamidzic and Oliver Kahn, representatives of a completely different generation, but still representatives of traditional club culture with a typical character.
The competition had hoped that the upheaval in the leadership and in the dressing room could stop Bayern’s domination, but the opposite has happened: where the great Spaniards or the giant Manchester United are still working on upheaval, Bayern have already done everything and History has already been made with 24/25 year olds named Kimmich, Goretzka, Gnabry or Coman. They didn’t even need to do it.
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