Goonerholics Forever

Remembering Bayern’s (let us use this ubiquitous moniker for FC Bayern München, our august opponents in this week’s Champions League clash) utter domination in German football over the last couple of decades, one can be forgiven to assume that this has always been thus so. Well, quite the contrary, Bayern’s path to sustained excellence arrived through years of darkness and ignominy.

In 1963 when the DFB (Deutscher Fußball-Bund – German Football Association) created the Bundesliga, it wanted only one club per city, and 1860 München — Oberliga Süd champions that year — got Munich’s place. Bayern were left in the regional league. Under coach Zlatko Čajkovski and president Wilhelm Neudecker, a generation of local youngsters — Franz Beckenbauer, Sepp Maier, Gerd Müller — won promotion in 1965. Two years later they lifted the Cup Winners’ Cup; in 1969 they were German champions. In a classic storybook fashion, insults became the inspiration.

The journey of German football in general, and Bayern München specifically, is that of an outsider. Football did not enter Germany through either the factory or the athletic establishments, but the classroom. In 1874 the Braunschweig teacher Konrad Koch introduced the game at the Martino-Katharineum grammar school, and a year later he published the first German rulebook — still closer to rugby than to the game we know. English merchants, engineers and students carried it further, into the port cities, Berlin and the commercial towns of the South-West.

There was fierce cultural resistance. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn’s patriotic gymnastics movement Turnbewegung – which prized collective discipline over competitiveness or individualism – was all the rage, and the passionate followers, including many patriotic minded Germans, derided the “English disease” for its “vulgarity” and “individualism”.

Football, the beautiful game, naturally, inevitably, won its argument at the end. Students and sons of the burgeoning middle class started forming their clubs away from the patriarchal and traditional Gymnastics associations. And post world war the shorter working hours as well as the formation of the new urban leisure culture helped transform formation into a spectator sport. Quite the pity then that so many of the Weimar-era set literature and films focus on the cabaret and the theatre, while young men might have been equally hankering after a well-fought match between FC Nürnberg and VfB Leipzig. A lesser known fact: the Gropius – Itten split in the Bauhaus movement (after which Itten left and Gropius brought in László Moholy-Nagy) has as much to do with a game of football – where the vegetarian-violent Itten almost broke Walter’s neck – as the whole functionalism-individualism difference of opinions. How do I know? I heard it from someone who heard it from someone who had a grandfather, who used to work in the garden of the Gropius residence in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

Maybe.

The above paragraph may or may not be historically accurate, it definitely is not recorded anywhere. But Bayern’s foundation and evolution are known to be historically accurate and well-recorded.

For its first half-century, the capital of Bavarian football was not Munich but Franconia, especially Nürnberg. FC Nürnberg was founded in 1900 by young men playing on the Deutschherrnwiese meadow. “Der Club” became the first great power of German football, winning five national titles between 1920 and 1927 and nine in all. Next door, SpVgg Fürth — born in 1903 as a football section of a gymnastics club — took titles in 1914, 1926 and 1929.

In the Bavarian capital, football grew out of the gymnastics clubs and the student milieu around the university and the bohemian, cosmopolitan district of Schwabing – at various times residence of Paul Klee and Thomas Mann – and that iconoclastic spirit was reflected in how the club was born. In early 1900 the footballers of MTV 1879 wanted to join the new national football structures; the club’s general meeting refused. On the evening of 27 February 1900, eleven of them walked out, gathered at Café Gisela in Schwabing, and founded the Fussball-Club Bayern München. The first couple of decades were all about survival and building an identity. Bayern’s rise to prominence came under the stewardship of Kurt Landauer, the son of a Jewish merchant family. Under Landauer and the Austrian-Jewish coach Richard Dombi, Bayern won their first German championship in 1932, beating Eintracht Frankfurt 2–0 in the final in Nuremberg.

You don’t need me to tell you what must have happened after that. Landauer was forced out; after the November pogrom of 1938 he was held at Dachau, then emigrated to Switzerland, while several of his siblings were murdered. The regime mocked Bayern as a “Judenklub”. Landauer came home in 1947 and became president again.

Bayern’s famous first three European Cup (predecessor to the current Champions League) final wins might haven’t happened if not for a moment of unlikely inspiration. One minute from defeat in the European Cup final against Atlético Madrid, Georg Schwarzenbeck — a defender who almost never scored any goals — struck from 25 metres to make it 1–1. Bayern won the replay 4–0 two days later and then retained the trophy in 1975 and 1976, beating Leeds and Saint-Étienne in finals. Without that one shot, maybe the Beckenbauer-Müller-Maier generation would now be remembered as Germany’s best team that never conquered Europe. As Noni Madueke proved last weekend, taking shots is essential if winning matches is the goal.

Since then, of course, Bayer has gone from strength to strength, winning three other Champions League trophies (all in this millennium). Their record against English clubs is a mixed one though. Especially if we keep the focus limited to the three most historically consistent and successful English clubs in Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United. Against Arsenal, Bayern holds the overall advantage, with 8 wins, 3 draws and 4 defeats in 15 matches (goals 31–18), including back-to-back 5–1 wins in the 2017 round of 16 (10–2 on aggregate) and the 2024 quarter-final win (2–2, 1–0), though we won the most recent meeting 3–1 in London in November 2025. Against Manchester United, Bayern have 6 wins, 5 draws and 2 defeats in 13 matches (goals 21–16), and United’s two victories — the 1999 final and the 3–2 at Old Trafford in 2010, which still saw Bayern through on away goals — are the only times they have beaten Bayern. Liverpool are the true bogey team: in 7 meetings Bayern have never won, with 4 draws and 3 defeats (goals 5–11), losing the 1971 Cup Winners’ Cup quarter-final, going out on away goals in the 1981 European Cup semi-final, losing the 2001 UEFA Super Cup 3–2 and falling 3–1 at home in the 2019 round of 16. Taken together, that is 14 wins, 12 draws and 9 defeats in 35 matches against the three clubs.

Can we improve our record against them this Wednesday? We are on an excellent run in the Champions League over the last couple of seasons. Our last season’s unbeaten home-or-away – the penalty shoot-out defeat counting as a draw for the match record – record has been extended by two more matches where we had seen off obdurate defending first by Napoli and then by Lille. Both of those two teams had set up in a manner very similar to how most of the teams in the Premier League play against us – deep defensive blocks, all players behind the ball, ceding control and space in favor of cutting out all passing lanes and not allowing any run behind the defenders.

Kompany’s Bayern, at home, will obviously not follow that formula. Many of their players would feel that they have a point to prove after their comprehensive away loss at Arsenal last season. Moreover, the crazy 3-3 draw at the Vikings FK last week means that they will be at their best to ensure no points are dropped at home. Even with Olise (red card) and Musiala (injury) absent, in Kimmich, Karl, Diaz and Kane they have genuine match-winners. With the talisman Neuer out with injury, Jonas Urbig is likely to retain his position in the goal. Kompany’s default formation this season has been 4-2-3-1, with the typical building up from back relying on ball playing abilities of Saliba’s international team-mate Upamecano and the German central defender Tah.

With Tzolis, Hincapié and Saliba still on the path to recovery, we do not have as many options as Mikel ideally would have preferred across all positions. It is somewhat paradoxical, but even though Konsa has been very good and getting better with each match, I think Saliba’s absence is felt the most in the entire structure of our team. While the temptation to retain the Rice-Guimarães connection in the midfield will be strong, one wonders when exactly Declan is going to get that rest to allow him to stay refreshed over the season. Maybe Zubimendi will start at home this weekend at PL, and in this match will be used to see out a positive scoreline. Myles will definitely take the place of Calafiori, and Timber starting with White on the bench.

This is my preferred starting line-up:

Raya
Timber – Konsa – Gabriel – MLS
Ødegaard – Rice – Guimarães
Saka – Gyökeres – Eze

With Max, Kai and Madueke to come in early in the second half if we need goals. Mosquera, White, Calafiori offer robust defensive cover, Zubimendi-Merino valuable midfield options. I am quite certain that Mikel’s line-up will not agree with this one!

If we keep the foundational strengths of our football – resilience, control, calmness and intelligence – consistently applied, I think we will create enough chances in an open match. A highly competitive 2-1 away win will do perfectly.

Come on Arsenal!