On Tuesday, FC Bayern and Real will meet for the 27th time – this time in the Champions League semi-finals. The two clubs are similar: both rely on continuity in management, financial stability and fatherly coaches. But the statistics speak for the Royals.
One of three draws: On May 1, 2018, Bayern (in the picture, front left: Thomas Müller) and Real Madrid (front right: Marcelo) drew 2-2 at the Bernabéu. Thanks to the 2-1 win in the semi-final first leg in Munich, Real moved into the Champions League final, which Zinedine Zidane’s team then won.
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A few weeks ago Iker Casillas, formerly a very successful goalkeeper for Real Madrid and the Spanish national team, said that the big duel in European club football was no longer Bayern Munich against Real Madrid, but Real Madrid against Manchester City. However, Bayern had not yet qualified for the semi-final against Real, the first leg of which takes place on Tuesday in the Munich stadium.
The statistics show that Casillas is wrong. With 26 games, the encounter is in fact the most frequent duel in European Cup history. Twelve wins for Real, eleven for Bayern, three draws. Goal difference: 40:39 for Madrid.
All duels took place in the European Cup of the national champions or in the Champions League. Only two of these matches were group games. After winning the knockout rounds, it is 7:5 for Madrid. Seven of these twelve knockout duels were semi-finals. Both clubs are also the clubs with the most semi-final appearances in the history of the most important club competition: Real Madrid made it to the last four 33 times, FC Bayern 21 times.
Is this all just a coincidence? Or is that perhaps because the two clubs are very similar in key respects? FC Bayern and Real Madrid have a lot more in common than it seems at first glance. And above all, they are the only clubs that can defy the dominance of the English Premier League and especially the clubs financed with Arab money.
The players shape the clubs
Since the days of the “White Ballet”, Real Madrid has stood for hero football. The Hispanic-Argentinian Alfredo Di Stéfano set the pace for the dance group that founded the royal myth with the first five European Cup victories between 1956 and 1960. He was supported by Raymond Kopa, Ferenc Puskás and Francisco Gento. In the 2000s, the idea was revived with the real “Galactic” – with Zinedine Zidane, Luís Figo, David Beckham, Raúl and Ronaldo.
Real has remained a hero club with stars like Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and, more recently, Vinícius Júnior and Jude Bellingham. In probably no other top team in Europe do individualists enjoy so much freedom. At the same time, team players like director Toni Kroos or, until recently, defense chief Sergio Ramos ensure the right balance.
FC Bayern cannot fully compete with such an accumulation of chosen ones. Nevertheless, Bayern probably come closest internationally to the image of a club that is shaped by its stars.
This is not only represented by the legendary axis with the goalkeeper Sepp Maier, the unprecedentedly successful goalgetter Gerd Müller and the super figure Franz Beckenbauer, who won the European Cup for national champions three times in the 1970s.
On April 14, 1976, the Munich team won 2-0 against Real Madrid in the semi-finals of the European Champions Cup. In the picture (from left to right): Bayern players Gerd Müller, Franz Beckenbauer and Uli Hoeness as well as José Antonio Camacho from Real.
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In the 1980s, Lothar Matthäus determined the game of the German record champion, later Stefan Effenberg. Illustrious personnel also shaped the recent past and the present – with the striker Robert Lewandowski, with Bastian Schweinsteiger and the wingers Arjen Robben and Franck Ribéry. There are also the goalkeeper icon Manuel Neuer and the English world star Harry Kane.
The successful coaches were fatherly figures
“Concepts are Kokolores” – this sentence, which is attributed to the former German national coach Erich Ribbeck, seems to apply to Real and Bayern in particular when it comes to the coaches. Those who were successful in Madrid and Munich are not tinkerers of the last detail, constantly scratching their heads.
Anyone who succeeds in Munich or Madrid is usually a virtuoso of the moment, a coach who can leave the stage to the players and take a back seat. This is a rare variety. Real’s eight Champions League titles were won by Jupp Heynckes, Vicente del Bosque (2), Carlo Ancelotti (2) and Zinedine Zidane (3) – all of them coaches who can be attributed to the model of the fatherly player friend and dressing room manager.
Bayern’s Champions League trophies were won by Ottmar Hitzfeld, Jupp Heynckes and Hansi Flick, who can also pass as hostel fathers for football millionaires. Such specialists have special character traits: They have to be unpretentious enough to be able to endure a management team that can be confused at times. And they have to be balancing to appease the big egos in the team, but at the same time resolute so that the players take them seriously.
Coaches from the category of tactical foxes don’t always fail, as Josep Guardiola’s three-year commitment to Munich shows. But recently even a coach as experienced as Thomas Tuchel expressed difficulty with the Munich club’s management. Tuchel is not known for his diplomatic manner, but for his clear statements.
There is continuity in the management team
Historically, the fluctuation in the coaching bench is offset by enormous stability in the management of the two clubs. The Madrilenians are a presidential club par excellence. 12 of the 14 European Cup titles were won by two men.
The first six titles came under the mythical Santiago Bernabéu, who was president from 1943 until his death in 1978. Bernabéu, a supporter of the right-wing Franco camp in the Spanish Civil War, nevertheless drove Real’s internationalization during the Franco dictatorship. Under him, Real became the world club it still is today.
He made Real Madrid the world club it is today: Santiago Bernabéu, the president of the Whites from 1943 to 1978.
ArchivoxABC / Imago
Current President Florentino Pérez (2000 to 2006 and again since 2009) has always been obsessed with being mentioned in the same breath as Bernabéu. He must have achieved his goal. The head of the construction group ACS, the most powerful entrepreneur in Spain, has tailored the club completely to his personality.
Uli Hoeness, the long-time manager and later president of FC Bayern, did a similar thing in Munich. He embodies FC Bayern like no other, and although he is no longer in office, his influence remains great.
Hoeness shaped Bayern after the successful 1970s, he led them out of a crisis and made them a world club. However, he had active support at times: Hoeness, who is a friend of the excessive executive power, was once appointed to Karl-Heinz Rummenigge as CEO.
The elders also intervened in Munich’s current crisis. Anyone who recently saw Hoeness defer to coach Thomas Tuchel, whose separation from FC Bayern is already a done deal, might get the idea that such a lordly club management, despite all the continuity, creates problems: who do powerful men consider worthy? to succeed her?
The finances – legendary like the Nibelung treasure
Both clubs are independent, they have no patron, but finance themselves from their own resources. Unlike Real, Bayern have sold 25 percent of the shares to the so-called strategic partners Adidas, Allianz and Audi. Nevertheless, the people of Munich are masters of their own house.
Financial independence gives both clubs sovereignty, just like the club’s own stadiums. The Munich stadium has long been debt-free; Real transferred part of the income to finance the renovation a few years ago.
Legendary like the Nibelungen treasure in the Rhine is Bavaria’s fixed-term deposit account, which is said to still contain more than 100 million euros. With a turnover of 854 million euros, the Munich-based company is doing brilliantly, they are debt-free anyway, and their equity is 533 million euros.
Real also operates in the same sphere (831.4 million euros in sales, 558 million in equity), although the Madrilenians were once close to bankruptcy. When President Pérez took over in 2000, he used his contacts in Madrid politics to have the training ground reassessed as building land – and thus renovated the club.
Where Real players once sweated, Madrid’s four tallest skyscrapers now stand. They are popularly called Zidane, Figo, Ronaldo and Beckham because their acquisition was financed that way. Similar to Bayern, the secret of solidity lies in strict monitoring of payroll. If a player’s demands threaten to break the structure, he will be shown the door – even if, like Cristiano Ronaldo in 2018 or Sergio Ramos in 2021, they are club icons.
The Real players José Maria Zarraga (front left) and Paco Gento (front right) celebrate at the Bernabéu in 1960 after their fifth European Cup triumph in a row.
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