This year, Champions League final week promises to a celebration of one of its cornerstone clubs. On Thursday May 17, the Women’s Champions League final will take place at Munich's iconic Olympiastadion, before Saturday sees the main event, the men's, unfold in Bayern Munich's current residence, the Allianz Arena.
History may mean something to fans, but it matters somewhat less to players, given the transient nature of their occupation and the imperative of focusing on the present. Yet much of this Bayern side has its own score to settle, having ended the 2010 final in Madrid as a mere footnote in José Mourinho's ever-lengthening roll-call of achievement, despite matching Inter for most of the match.
For the club that made more money from the first decade of the Champions League than anyone else, the final is the minimum requirement this time around. President Uli Hoeness knows only too well from the gritted-teeth grins of his hosts in the Bernabéu two years ago that Bayern doesn’t want to be a gooseberry in its own back yard.
Ostensibly, Hoeness has a more reliable side to make it happen this time. The 2010 Bayern was a thrilling but haphazard beast, as porous as it was potent. Had Louis van Gaal managed to make a team with such a flaky defense European champion, it would probably have ranked as the finest achievement of an illustrious coaching career.
Wednesday's relatively straightforward negotiation of one of Europe's trickier away tests, at Marseille's Stade Vélodrome, seems to indicate that today's incumbent Jupp Heynckes has a little more reliability at his fingertips. Jerome Boateng, so underwhelming during his season at Manchester City, has added solidity and finally there is a presence in goal worthy of Oliver Kahn’s mantle, following the arrival of Manuel Neuer.
Marseille may be horribly out of form but this was still light years away from the nervy drama of the 2010 run, when defeats at Fiorentina and Manchester United were trivialized by the moments of brilliance from Arjen Robben that led Bayern through both of those awkward moments on away goals. This time Robben's slick second-half strike in Provence was the seal on a job well done, rather than a daring rescue act to add to those of yesteryear.
The Dutchman remains an enigma; one of the world's most talented individuals, but one who has delighted and frustrated in equal measure wherever he's been, susceptible to injury and often accused of upsetting locker-room harmony. Earlier in the year, rumors abounded of a possible summer exit.
Encouragingly, he's enjoying himself at the moment. His delightful back-heeled flick to set up Toni Kroos for the opener in the win over Hannover on Saturday said as much, and a happy Robben makes for a happy Bayern. "Some things can change, and change very quickly," he grinned after the Marseille win, in response to the observation that Bayern was widely accepted to be in a mini-crisis just a few short weeks ago.
On the other wing, things weren’t so easy. Franck Ribéry has manfully shouldered much of the creative load for Heynckes this season, a coach who he has praised as a breath of fresh air after his difficult relationship with Van Gaal. Yet the hero of France's run to the 2006 World Cup final is now not far from persona non grata in his home country. Germany's fans and media feared Ribéry ahead of last month's Bremen friendly with France. Their French counterparts said not to worry, and they were proved right. The winger's poor national team form continued. Ineffective, he was withdrawn at half-time.
Once upon a time, this fiercely insular corner of French soccer would have shielded him against any of the brickbats. Not any more. As he warmed up, Ribéry had to endure obscene chants about his mother from the Marseille fans who once adored him. His status in the city could not be more different from that of fellow alumnus Didier Drogba, who played just one season at the Vélodrome but whose commitment was never in question. "The manner of his (Ribéry’s) departure didn’t have the same class as Drogba's," a member of the supporters group Dodgers told L'Equipe TV this week. "That’s one heck of a difference."
The upset goes back further than his 2007 departure for Germany. For some, the memory of Ribéry's head being turned after an excellent 2006 World Cup remains fresh. On the eve of the 2006/07 season, he told French national broadcaster TF1 that he wanted to be allowed to join then-champion Olympique Lyonnais. Having lit up the world's biggest soccer stage, he was publicly belittling a proud club that had given him the opportunity to shine.
His current image in France follows his annus horribilis of 2010, when he was suspended for the Champions League final in Madrid and then held personally responsible by the bulk of the French public for the national side's humiliating implosion in the summer's World Cup. His brutal, studs-up lunge on Lyon's Lisandro López in the semi-final first leg that earned a red card turned out to be small beer, next to the vilification that accompanied Ribéry's widely-perceived central role in the France squad's mutiny in Knysna, South Africa.
It will be a relief that he was not required to be at his best. Bayern may not be known for its nurturing image, but Ribéry feels safe here, protected. Only last week, he told the media he "can’t see why I wouldn’t spend the rest of my career here." His increasingly terse relationship with the French public and media is only to Bayern's profit; and his team will need him if it is to arrive safely in its home showpiece, with a semi-final against Real Madrid coming into view.
While Bayern is tighter now than two years ago, it is still unpredictable. Away form in particular has been scatty, as error-strewn domestic defeats at Hannover, Mönchengladbach and Leverkusen have proven. The generally excellent Neuer has been culpable in these, with his errors directly leading to Gladbach's and Leverkusen's opening goals. At the weekend, the goalkeeper’s dithering over a clearance almost gifted an equalizer to Hannover's Mame Biram Diouf.
Against Marseille, a tale of two tackles told why Bayern must beware. Just as against France in Bremen, the richly-gifted Toni Kroos wasn't at his best deep in midfield, playing locum for the recuperating Bastian Schweinsteiger. Here, he was coaxed into a clumsy foul on the nippy Mathieu Valbuena, which earned a 31st-minute booking. Heynckes needs Schweinsteiger to be available. The similarly experienced Philipp Lahm’s wild challenge on Valbuena as the first period came to a close should have resulted in a second booking that would have changed the face of the match.
Therein lies the difference between on paper and in reality. The wily Heynckes, ruthlessly fired by Real Madrid days after capturing the club’s seventh European champion title in 1998, will need no warning of the step up required in the last four.
