The opened club World Cup begins in the United States on June 14, with its 32 teams are divided into eight groups of four for the opening phase.
As part of our side guides that will appear on this summer tournament, the SEB Stafford-Bloor offers Bayern Munich’s backdrop.
Who are they?
Bayern is the 34 times German national champion. Only one of these titles was won before the current structure of the Domestic League Bundesliga appeared in 1963. In the following years, they won the title in 33 of the 62 seasons of the played league (53 %), including 12 of the last 13. They are also six times European champions and won the Club World Cup twice on their old guise as an event.
How good they are?
They are coming back.
Bayern’s imperial era occurred from 2012 to 2023, when he won 11 followed titles of the Bundesliga. They also won the Champions League in 2020, but were declining for a few years before Bayer Leverkusen finished their domestic domain in 2024. Last season saw them recover the Bundesliga and make great advances in the right direction.
Your domestic success still needs context. Bayern has won more Bundesliga titles than any other combined German team. They also enjoy a significant financial advantage over the nearest rivals; Bayern owns the country’s transfer record, with € 95 million (£ 80.1 million/$ 108.5 million at current rates) spending on English striker Harry Kane in 2023, and completed eight of the most expensive entry agreements in German football history.
It is hegemony of the way you look the look and therefore the European, non -domestic competition, will always be the measure of how good Bayern is. They have made limited progress back to the 2024-25 Champions League, with any internal finalists eliminating them in the quarterfinals, while showing that they still have many flaws to be considered a truly elite team.
First year’s main coach Vincent Kompany inherited a weak defensive group, full of issues he is yet to heal and the center of his midfield lacks the muscle and definition that the club had under some of its predecessors.
So this is still a team between the times. Bayern is good, but they are not as excellent as they were.
How did they arrive here?
Through its placement in European football that governs the UEFA four -year ranking, having reached until the quarterfinals of the Champions League three times and the semifinal once during this period.
What is their style of play?
They want the ball and want control.
One feature of his attack with Kompany was to use strikers Jamal Musiala and Kane in deeper positions, often receiving passes well within his own half, and then implementing their respective play attributes at the beginning of movements rather than just at the end of them.
Large strikers, particularly Michael Olise, are especially important and provide a lot of movement and impetus in the third attack. With alphonso davies, influential and incendiary, unavailable by long -term injuries, Bayern will depend even more on olise in this tournament.
Kompany improved his team’s work rate without the ball (Alex Grimm/Getty Images)
Elsewhere, Joshua Kimmich is the heart of the middle and will want to orchestrate the possession phases of the midfield. Leon Goretzka, who will probably start with him, is a more vertical and physical player who will play a deeper role and will come late in the opponents’ penalty box.
One of Kompany’s hits was greatly improving the work of his players without the ball. Bayern is a high-pressing team that will try to block the opponents on their own third or force them to play a lot to get out of it. Are they always good at doing this? No. It is a work in progress, and that can still be a weakness.
Tell us about the coach …
Kompany, the former Manchester City Capitão and one of the best central advocates of his time, was a surprise choice when he was appointed in 2024.
He came to Bayern directly from a relegation of the Premier League with Burnley and without major trophies in his managerial record. The 39 -year -old was seen as without the credentials for the role, and her arrival was received with many doom prophecies.
But he exceeded expectations. Players like him, and the younger ones enjoyed their style of communication and the instructive and detailed nature of their training.
Outside the field, he adapted well to the environment. Bayern is always full of political issues and Kompany sailed them intelligently, getting away from public arguments and the media that have harmed their predecessor Thomas Tuchel.
Who is the player of his star?
Olise was Bayern’s best player last season and Kane, her best scorer, but Musiala is the star.
(Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)
The 22 -year -old is a doubt that this tournament had not played since a tendon injury in April, but at his best he is a fabulously talented star and one of the most dodging ball carriers in European football. He had already matched his best goals season before this injury, a measure not only in his form, but also of the evolution in his game in Kompany.
And your rising star?
Olise is one of them. He was hired from Crystal Palace of Premier League last summer, and although it costs € 50 million, a large rate in terms of the Bundesliga, there was a feeling that he was coming as a two or three -year project, not as a creator of immediate differences.
By chance, Olise was excellent almost from the beginning. He was one of the reasons why Bayern was more assistable, more subtle, and finally more dangerous than his 2023-24 team. The France International, born in London, is right on the edge of the star.
Bayern fans would also point to Aleksandar Pavlovic. The 21-year-old is a deep midfielder, with an adorable sensation to the game. His season has been interrupted by a series of light injuries and a glandular fever attack, but when in shape and healthy he goes through the ball, as well as anyone in the club and seems likely to be in his team’s heart for the next decade.
Olise’s rhythm and ability will be crucial to Bayern’s attack (Alexandra Beier/AFP via Getty Images)
And he is also homemade. Pavlovic was born in Munich and developed by the Bayern Youth Academy – something that already makes him extremely popular with his supporters.
Who are your biggest rivals at home?
There are different answers to this.
Locally, Munich is a city of two clubs, including Bayern, the Reds and 1860 of Munich, Blues.
However, 1860 were tormented by financial dysfunction during the modern era and fell in difficult times, currently playing in 3.Liga, the third level of German football. As a measure of how dormant rivalry is, the two teams have not faced each other since 2008-one year before Thomas Muller, who will leave Bayern this summer as his 751 appearance record (so far), had made his competitive debut.
Borussia Dortmund is a kind of rival, even though it gives Klassiker, as the games between the two are called, is more a marketing construction than a reality. Dortmund, six hours driven from Munich, would certainly consider neighbors Schalke as his greatest rivals, though They are in the second division of Germany.
Bayer Leverkusen’s rise under Xabi Alonso has made them rival, with the animosity of the last seasons between their players and even some rivals of the board, but this is very young and probably will disappear as alonso now, managing the players of Real Madrid and Leverkusen.
Bayern and Borussia Monchengladbach had a fascinating advantage in the 1970s.
It was a political rivalry in a sense. In public perception, Bayern was the established power and Gladbach, the youngest challenger in a free spirit. The informal nickname of the latter, “The Foals”, is a reference to these teams and their young people. But these dynamics were embellished and do not have much scrutiny. Bayern teams of that time scored many goals and were full of rebel and counterculture characters.
The rivalry was real enough, and the games between the two have a habit of producing strange results, even today.
Tell us something strange and/or wonderful in the club
Bayern was formed in response to pejorative attitudes towards competitive football. The 11 original club members originally belonged to a turn-vira-videin 1878 (MTV) and were the Football Department of what was mainly a gym club.
In the early twentieth century, organized gymnastics – ‘Turnen’ – was very popular in Germany and seen as a way to promote the collective and nationalist spirit. On the other hand, football was a game imported from England that created competitive instincts that many considered vulgar.
Then, in February 1900, when MTV’s soccer players moved to start playing competitive games and indicated their desire to join the local football association, their colleagues were horrified. In response to an impasse on the subject at a club meeting, soccer players went out, went down the street to a nearby restaurant and founded Bayern Munchen from the soccer club.
You can still visit the place in the city where it happened. The restaurant itself has long been gone and most of the area seems very different, having been rebuilt after bombing during World War II, but there is an obelisk marking the place a few meters from Odensplatz Square, in which the club’s founding document is mounted.
Why should a neutral fan biting to them?
They are still owned by their members.
Giants from the Audi, Adidas, and Allianz business world have a 8.33 % stake in Bayern’s football division, but fans of the club keep voting control. Bayern is a commercial power and hardly an oppressed, but in a sovereign football world, sporting wash and worrying morality, they can exist as a superclub without ethical diligents.
(Main Photos: Getty Images; Design: Kelsea Petersen)
