Tuesday, November 08, 2011
IT has been said of the Bundesliga that it’s the most exciting competition in the world, except when Bayern Munich are playing well, and a look at the table seems to confirm it.
Twelve games in, and Bayern are five points clear — the same number of points that cover the next seven teams. More ominous still, for non-Bavarians anyway, Bayern have only conceded four goals.
Minus Bastian Schweinsteiger, who broke his collarbone in the Champions League win against Napoli, they looked a little more vulnerable in the closing minutes of their game against Augsburg on Sunday.
But they still came away with a win. Once again Mario Gomez was in the right place at the right time to score his 13th league goal of the season. His total in all competitions is now 20, plus two for Germany, and it seems he can’t stop scoring. He’s had another six in five games for Germany and could well add to that total on Saturday when they play a friendly against Ukraine.
Gomez is definitely Europe’s form striker at present, but could this goal glut also reveal something about the weakness of Bundesliga defences? Just behind him in the scorers’ table are Claudio Pizarro of Werder Bremen and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, who plays for Schalke.
Huntelaar was a scoring sensation for Ajax in Holland, but like some other strikers who have made hay in the Eredivisie he looked much less of a threat in stronger leagues. He wasn’t a total flop at Real Madrid, but they still sold him on to Milan after six months, and he didn’t impress the Italians either.
Pizarro is a Bundesliga veteran and he’s scored more than 50 league goals (82 in all) since moving back there three years ago. Yet he looked slow and cumbersome in the Premier League and managed just two in 28 appearances for Chelsea.
Germany along with Spain will start among the favourites for Euro 2012 but the suspicion remains that their clubs, with the obvious exception of Bayern, are not quite at the same level when it comes to top European competition.
An interesting test will come in a fortnight. Of those seven clubs chasing Bayern, Borussia Dortmund are second while Bayer Leverkusen are in eighth. By coincidence they both play English opposition at the end of the month and both have a chance of qualifying for the knockout stages of the Champions League.
Dortmund destroyed Wolfsburg 5-1 on Saturday, have won five out of their last six, and are a threat to anyone when Mario Goetze is in such striking form. The good news for Arsenal is that their warm-up game is away to Bayern, so Jurgen Klopp will be unable to rest key players.
Leverkusen have looked rather less convincing. Unlike Dortmund their home form is very uneven and on Saturday they allowed a weak Hamburg side to come back and secure a point after going 2-0 down in the first 20 minutes.
Rather like Schalke last season, Leverkusen seem able to put themselves into a strong position and then fire haphazardly at their own feet. Like Dortmund they have an away game as a Champions League warm-up, although Kaiserslautern are rather less of a challenge than Bayern.
The difference between the Bavarians and the also-rans this season is in goal as much as up front.
It’s a mystery why Manuel Neuer is not on the Player of the Year shortlist after his heroics for Schalke last season as well as his consistent reliability for Germany. Gomez too has been strangely ignored.
Maybe that does reflect the different profile of the Bundesliga compared to Spanish football, or maybe there is that lurking feeling that German football doesn’t quite measure up, despite all its excitement, record-breaking crowds and financial success.
Yet Europe’s form team Real Madrid have been snapping up Bundesliga players — Sami Khedira, Mezut Ozil, Hamit Altintop, Nuri Sahin — to great effect. After their 7-1 destruction of Osasuna they rather than Barcelona could be the most likely Spanish candidates to reach the European final in May, perhaps facing Bayern in the Allianz Arena.
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