My Undisputed Bad Take: I don’t want Bayern Munich to win the Bundesliga

At Bavarian Football Works, we are using this midseason break to expose ourselves (phrasing!). When working on Bayern Munich news and opinions on 24x7x365 basis, the entire staff develops some very good — and some very, very bad — takes. Whether these takes are relevant to past, present, or future opinions, we are going to let you in on some of the stupid things we think as part of a series. Without further ado, BFW will let is all hang out (damn it! phrasing again!).

My Undisputed Bad Take: I don’t want Bayern Munich to win the Bundesliga

Stop the presses. What in the world is this man saying? Is he not a Bayern Munich fan? Does he not want his own team to win? Some of the current ideas boiling in your head is probably true.

Let me start off by explaining what type of Bayern Munich fan I was in my early years. Ever since my dad took me to Munich’s Olympiastadion on a cold November night to watch Bayern play Borussia Dortmund, I was head over heels in love with football.

I grew up in a very balanced home, with two wonderful parents who taught me from an early age what is right and what is wrong. Going to my first football game therefore, seemed contradictory of all that. People were smoking, shouting swear words in German I could not understand, and flipping off the Borussia Dortmund fans as they retaliated in the same manner. As a six-year-old, it felt like a quite hostile environment but at the same time, incredibly exciting. It introduced me to a new way of life, and only after five minutes, I was too shouting, swearing at the referee, and singing songs in very flawed German about my new football team.

After that experience, I never missed a game. I was the type of kid that cried and punched the walls when Bayern lost, and increased the decibels drastically in my living room when Bayern won. Throughout my whole childhood, I felt the pain during the lows, and felt euphoria during the highs.

At the same time, I realized that it was not only Bayern Munich that I felt an appreciation too. Growing up close to the Ruhr district, with a father who was more than willing to drive on a Saturday with his son to watch football, we went to games that didn’t involve Bayern. I witnessed 45,000 FC Köln supporters simultaneously put their scarves over their heads while singing ‘‘FC Kölle’’ at the top of their lungs, I’ve seen the ‘‘Yellow Wall’’ and let me tell you, any words describing it doesn’t do it justice.

My point is that there was one point in my life, where my love for the Bundesliga culture trumped my love for Bayern. I think that it happened at one point during these eight consecutive league wins. No team had won the Bundesliga for three consecutive years before 2013, now Bayern has won eight. It is the same situation in both Italy and France, with Juventus and Paris SG gradually killing the competitiveness of their respective domestic leagues.

I sometimes view it as ‘‘Big Business’’ destroying the competitive arena for others. The possibility of a ‘‘Super League’’ seems more possible every day, a concept that I will never support. A Super League takes away everything I love about football. For me football is not just a sport, it is a social phenomenon. I see football as one of the last and largest collective expressions in an extremely individualized and fragmented time. The sport’s ability to gather people in a time when nothing else really succeeds is completely unique. A ‘‘Super League’’ would eliminate the regular fan and make every game as expensive as most Champions League games.

The fear of joining a Super League is very real if you are a Bayern supporter with a similar mind-frame like me. Perhaps, if Bayern found themselves a consistent domestic challenger, they wouldn’t feel the need to join a soulless creation that focuses only on economical advantages, and not fans.

The other reason I want someone else to win is for the simple reason that it has become boring. I don’t feel the same happiness in 2020 as I did in 2013. ‘‘Oh we won the league...again’’ is all I’ve felt for the last 4-5 years. We as Bayern fans have become so spoiled that Fergus25 felt the need to write an article about why Bayern should trust Flick after Bayern has lost two games this year. Bayern winning constantly is probably enjoyable for most supporters on this beautiful website, a website which for me epitomizes how football can bring people together from all over the world. But I can’t seem to find it enjoyable that Bayern, alongside teams such as Juventus and Paris SG, is the driving force of the current separation happening in modern European football.

So, in conclusion, I would want Bayern to struggle in the league for a few years. I would want younger fans in this forum to experience their team actually struggling and in turn, experience their team succeeding after a tough period. Never mind articles of why the FIFA awards are unfair (seriously who in the world cares about individual awards in a team sport?!), I want Ineednoname to write a long analysis of why Bayern hasn’t won a trophy in three years.

Am I not a true Bayern fan anymore? Maybe. Am I a buzzkill who can’t enjoy the most successful period of Bayern’s history? Absolutely. Nevertheless, this article is food for thought and most definitively, a very bad take.