Arsene to Bayern?!

As the Bundesliga season draws to a predictable (but still exciting!) close and the final matches of the Champions League approach, there is one season in soccer that always remains hot: Take season. Here, we have a beautiful work of art coming from the classic take category of: “Hey, here’s an idea that makes no sense for either party and has no evidence to necessitate speculation...but what if?!”

In an op-ed for Abendzeitung, Michael Schleicher weighs the pros and cons of bringing Arsene Wenger to Bayern Munich as Jupp Heynckes’s successor.

Hä, wos?

Let’s just say this and get it out of the way: Arsene Wenger to Bayern. Feels weird, right? It’s like saying “peanut butter and gefilte fish sandwich” or “walrus apothecary” or “Leverkusen win the Bundesliga!” Like, these are words, and I know them as words, but together they just don’t make sense.

The AZ article provides a convincing argument that . . . Wenger speaks German. Which, okay fair! Bayern does want a German manager next, or at least one that speaks German. A quick Google search puts the number of German speakers worldwide at 175–220 million people, so if that is our only requirement, this is a wide open field. The author also notes that Wenger speaks several other languages, too. The more the merrier, right? And he puts forward some idea that Wenger would know how to manage the egos of big stars at Bayern, to which I say “Alexis Sanchez.”

Overall, you can’t blame Schleicher for searching for a clickbait-y headline during what is a bit of a lull in German football news. We all have bills to pay! But this is just silly tabloid fodder at its finest. An unfeasible idea with no basis in reality written about in a way that ignores its inherent silliness.

I’ll close this with a fun fact: Bayern and Arsenal have played eight meaningful matches (all in the Champions League) since 2012. Bayern has won those matches by an aggregate score of 21 to 8.