Borussia Dortmund’s Michael Zorc stresses the financial gap is the reason Bayern Munich routinely wins the Bundesliga

It’s already set in stone. With their 3-1 win over Borussia Dortmund at the weekend, Bayern Munich clinched their tenth consecutive Bundesliga title, becoming the first team in Europe’s top five leagues to accomplish that feat. Even with winning a record-breaking Meisterschale, by their own high standards, Bayern’s season under Julian Nagelsmann was still underwhelming having exited both the DFB-Pokal and UEFA Champions League at the hands of clubs they should’ve beaten (Borussia Monchengladbach, Villarreal). Still, nothing should be taken away from their domestic title success. At the end of 34 match weeks, whatever team has the most points wins, and Bayern, yet again, did enough to make that happen.

At different stages of the season, closing the gap on Bayern was there for the taking for Dortmund, but they failed to make the most of their opportunities. No team has been impervious to COVID infections, other illnesses, injuries, and/or suspensions, but there were several periods in the season where Nagelsmann had a very thin squad as a result of said circumstances accumulating. Despite all of this, Dortmund sporting director Michael Zorc still sees the financial gap between Bayern and the rest of the Bundesliga clubs as the main culprit for their continued domestic dominance.

Zorc described the Bundesliga as an “uneven race” (Tz). We made 285 million euros less in sales than FC Bayern in the last financial year. This difference means that Bayern can afford around ten (Serge) Gnabrys more than we can in terms of salaries,” he passionately stressed. In his eyes, because of the large financial gap, the Meisterschale is automatically Bayern’s to lose. As long as there aren’t any catastrophic set backs in any given campaign, he feels they’ll easily win the title.

Much like what Philipp Lahm has recently expressed, Zorc wishes for title races to be much tighter in the future. Dortmund has gotten very used to finishing second behind Bayern, which is something Zorc said is absolutely no solace to consistently losing out to Bayern. “No one pats you on the shoulder on Westenhellweg in Dortmund for second place. This atmosphere is a danger for the club and its 800 employees. We need to get away from not being considered failure if you don’t become champions,” he explained.

Photo by Frederic Scheidemann/Getty Images