The difficulty with quantifying Borussia Dortmund versus Bayern Munich for a worldwide audience lies in the fact that it is a fixture laced with contradictions.
On the one hand, it pits the two best-supported clubs in Germany on a collision course, and 26 of the past 31 Meisterschale lifts have been carried out by either the Schwarz-Gelben from the gritty western Ruhrpott or, more frequently, the sophisticated Bavarian Rekordmeister.
But this is not, for example, at all like in Spain, where that country’s two foremost teams take up 99% of the football media oxygen. In Germany, every community in every major conurbation is represented to the tune of large, hopping crowds and staggeringly sizable memberships. In Stuttgart, Frankfurt and places like Gelsenkirchen — the home of second-tier Schalke 04 just 20 miles along the Autobahn — the main focus this weekend will still be on local considerations rather than stopping everything at 6:30 p.m. to witness a communal nationwide experience.
It is understandable, though, that German football decision-makers wanted to elevate this clash more than a decade ago and with that has come the elevation of Der Klassiker as the accepted shorthand. Many fans who I bump into on trains, in pubs and outside grounds scoff at this “marketing” nomenclature whereas around the world, certainly among more casual Bundesliga fans, it provides access to something immediately comprehensible and relatable.
It is also noticeable that more and more Bayern and Dortmund players are using the Klassiker term, which is perhaps merely a reflection of the media landscape and influences in which they have grown up.
When I first arrived here as a young student in the 1980s, there was no thought given to the fixture representing anything close to the definitive German football occasion. If anything, the Klassiker of the 1970s had been Borussia Mönchengladbach-Bayern and it was to be superseded early in the following decade by the Nord-Süd-Gipfel (north-south summit) meeting of Hamburg SV and Bayern, the two dominant teams of that era from two of the largest cities in the Bundesrepublik.
For their part, Dortmund always had the helter-skelter Revierderby skirmishes with Schalke, Germany’s most prominent derby. Bayern had southern business to take care of amid regional excitement in matches against VfB Stuttgart (Südgipfel) and FC Nürnberg. So, when did we reach the Zeitenwende (turning point)?
The BVB-Bayern tension started to take hold in 1995 and 1996 with back-to-back title wins for Dortmund, who then in 1997 had the temerity, under manager Ottmar Hitzfeld, to lift the UEFA Champions League trophy at Bayern’s old home the Olympiastadion.
Hitzfeld flew the nest to Munich and the intensity grew more robust. In a tempestuous 1-1 draw in Dortmund in 2001, a total of 10 players were booked and three sent off, still the record for any Bundesliga tussle. History has recorded that when BVB endured financial woes in 2004, a loan of €2 million from Bayern helped them keep the grim reaper from the door.
In my view, it was the Jürgen Klopp period that truly invigorated things. Let’s not forget that, en route to winning the Meisterschale in 2011 and 2012, Dortmund did the clean sweep — winning four times in a row — against the Bavarians.
The game that I’ll always think about to conjure memories of tension in that spell was on Matchday 30 in the 2011-12 season. It had all the feel of the best two teams in Europe on a collision course and Robert Lewandowski put BVB in front with 13 minutes to go. Then suddenly Arjen Robben was brought down inside the box by Roman Weidenfeller and referee Knut Kircher pointed to the spot.
Weidenfeller parried away Robben’s weak attempt and it was a matter of considerable debate fueled by the late, great Franz Beckenbauer on TV, that the Dutchman had even taken it in the first place. Apparently, the old rule was, he who was fouled, shouldn’t take the spot kick. We all learned that as viewers together. A year later, Bayern and Dortmund could quite rightly regard themselves as the two best clubs in Europe when they met at what Germans often call the home of football, Wembley.
Bayern’s Champions League final success that year was the prelude to a decade-plus of utter dominance on the domestic front. It mattered little that during the years they won 11 league titles in a row, Dortmund were their closest pursuers on eight occasions. The chasm was visible, and several hammerings were handed out.
Still, I always feel every Dortmund-Bayern duel to be a Momentaufnahme, a snapshot of that moment for both teams. In March, BVB rewrote the trend of recent history by recording their first league win in Munich for almost a decade, as if to compound the agony for a Bayern side about to lose its crown to Bayer Leverkusen.
People who don’t follow the Bundesliga closely are prone to think Bayern inevitably will always win. This, however, will be a test of how good Vincent Kompany’s squad really is. After the free-flowing Hurra-Fußball of the first few weeks this term, they have grown stubbornly pragmatic as evidenced by seven consecutive games in all competitions without conceding.
But Dortmund under Nuri Şahin, while wildly inconsistent, have had the magic formula in front of 81,000 on the Strobelallee this season, winning all six home games in the Bundesliga and two more in the Champions League. Indeed, that winning run extends to 11 if you take it back to last season, which saw them finish second in the Champions League while only fifth in the Bundesliga.
So, what will the Momentaufnahme consist of this time? Anyone who tells you they already know is surely just guessing.
