The German Bundesliga season begins on Friday night conscious that, just off stage, there is a ghost haunting the two biggest clubs in the land. He may not mean to but nor is he a character to go about his business incognito, or quietly.
Jurgen Klopp, currently without employment since leaving Borussia Dortmund, will feature in headlines regularly as he did this week for turning down an approach from Marseille, and in doing so inevitably heightening speculation that he has his eye on a better post sometime in the medium-term future.
Might that be Bayern Munich, where current coach Pep Guardiola’s contract expires next June? It may seem perverse on the day Bayern play their first match of the league campaign to raise the issue of what Guardiola might do after their 34th, but the uncertainties around his tenure have made that a dominant theme ahead of the 53rd Bundesliga season.
Read more:
[ – Five Bundesliga players in new surroundings who will have early impact in Germany ]
[ – Bayern Munich firm favourites for league title in what could be Guardiola’s farewell season ]
[ – Wolfsburg chief expects Kevin De Bruyne to ‘entertain’ offer from Manchester City ]
Besides, the other 17 clubs need to try nourish the thought of internal fractures and insecurities undermining Bayern, who have won their league three times on the trot now, and each one very easily.
The longer Guardiola goes without answering the club’s requests that he commit further ahead to Bayern, the more Klopp’s name is bandied around in Bavaria.
Klopp, one of the Bundesliga’s most charismatic figures of the 21st century and, most importantly, the last coach to deny Bayern the Bundesliga shield – his Dortmund won it in 2011 and 2012 – is, in the opinion of former Bayern player, coach and president Franz Beckenbauer, a coach who would suit Bayern.
Dortmund’s chief executive, Hans-Joachim Watzke, last week agreed: “Bayern and Klopp would be a 100 per cent fit,” he said.
Safe to report Watzke has been around long enough to know that stating a view on Bayern’s unsettled issue might be deemed as stirring.
Dortmund parted with Klopp on good terms and have given him three season tickets for the Westfalen Arena, so they should still be seeing plenty of him, and hoping his presence does not spook them.
He and the club acknowledged that last term’s seventh-place finish was below par and that last winter’s disappointing spell, in which they were they bottom of the table at one point, meant a new direction was needed for the team. And the club seem very happy with Thomas Tuchel, the man now in charge.
Yet Tuchel will certainly hear the ghost of Klopp clambering around the premises in his first few weeks. He cannot help but be compared with his predecessor, especially given their shared history.
Both were at Mainz, the club Tuchel left last year, before Dortmund. Both are seen as innovators, though Tuchel’s brand of football, on the evidence of pre-season, may be quite distinct from the high-intensity, pressing style Klopp established at Dortmund. It may even be rather more Guardiola-like, than Kloppesque.
Tuchel will be relieved when the comparisons stop, once Dortmund establish themselves as his team, and he as his own man. Whether he can make them sustained challengers to Bayern is another matter.
They finished 33 points beneath the champions last season. Dortmund’s real goal will be simply to finish in the top four and return to the Uefa Champions League for 2016/17.
In their favour is that no figurehead player has, at least not yet, departed this summer, with defender Mats Hummels and midfielder Ilkay Gundogan, both targets of heavyweight clubs abroad, apparently persuaded that the Tuchel era will suit them.
Wolfsburg, who finished second last term 10 points off Bayern, will aspire to again be first in the slipstream, although they may well lose Kevin de Bruyne, admired by Manchester City, an absence not exactly compensated by the addition to their ranks of striker Max Kruse.
The Wolves, though buoyed by victory in the German Supercup over Bayern earlier this month, have adopted the philosophy that they must be ready to pounce on any signs of Bayern weakness, set their own standards high and hope for an improbable sequence of stumbles from the richest, strongest squad in the league, a Bayern with Douglas Costa and Arturo Vidal now adding to the crowd of talent in midfield and attacking positions.
Beneath the summit, there is fluidity in the Bundesliga. Witness Augsburg’s rise. They look forward to European football for the first time in their history, just four years after reaching the top flight for the first time.
That is an inspiration for Ingolstadt, the promoted freshmen of this season, and for Darmstadt, who are among the elite again after a 33-year period in the lower divisions.
To stay up, they must both hope they pick up underdog points against the likes of Hamburg, former European champions whose skin-of-their teeth battles against the drop are now becoming a perennial feature of the Bundesliga.
Poor Hamburg. Their reward for squeezing through their relegation play-off last May is an opener against the champions on Friday night.
sports@thenational.ae
Follow us on Twitter at NatSportUAE
