The respected German magazine, Der Spiegel, described it as the “beginning of the end of the Bundesliga”.
That’s how deep shock towards Mats Hummels’s proposed move to Bayern Munich runs in some quarters. To have the captain of Borussia Dortmund, after eight successful seasons at the Westfalenstadion, announce that he wants to leave to join their arch-rivals is the umpteenth slap in the face. Not just for Dortmund fans, who went through this twice in the past three summers — losing their enfant prodige, Mario Götze, and their star centre forward, Robert Lewandowski, to the Bavarians — but for the league as a whole.
“Imagine Manchester United, at the peak of their dominance, cherry-picking superstars from Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool and you begin to get the picture
With two games to go, a win and a draw will take Borussia Dortmund to 81 points. That wouldn’t be enough to win the league, but only three teams in Bundesliga history have accumulated more: Bayern in 2012-13, Bayern in 2013-14 and Bayern this season.
You can stick your head in the sand all you like, but the upshot is obvious. Borussia Dortmund are 180 minutes away from successfully putting together the fourth best season in the history of the German game, they have the highest average attendance in world football for the fourth straight season and, still, they can’t hang on to their long-time captain.
Players will move on to bigger, wealthier clubs, that’s just a truism of football. What makes this different is that, time and again, Bayern raid direct opponents for their best players. Götze, Lewandowski and now apparently Hummels from Dortmund. Before that, it was Dante from Borussia Mönchengladbach, Mario Mandzukic from Wolfsburg and Manuel Neuer from Schalke.
Advertisement
Imagine Manchester United, at the peak of their dominance, cherry-picking superstars from Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool and you begin to get the picture. This flow of talent — compared with a top signing from abroad — has a dual effect: it strengthens Bayern and weakens the opposition, who are already trying to play catch up.
In Hummels’s case however, it hurts even more. This month, he is due to lead out Borussia in the German Cup final against — you guessed it — Bayern, making you wonder about the timing of his announcement as well. Then there’s Hummels’s history with the Bavarians. His father was a youth coach at the club and he joined Bayern as a six-year-old, making it all the way through the ranks to make a single first-team appearance in 2007. But neither Ottmar Hitzfeld nor his successor, Jürgen Klinsmann, felt that he was ready. And so he was loaned to Dortmund, who made the deal permanent in 2009, with Hummels famously refusing the opportunity to return to Bayern under Louis van Gaal.
In 2012, he said: “I don’t care about Bayern,” much to the joy of the Dortmund faithful. It was the stuff of folk heroes. Like Alan Shearer turning down Manchester United or Francesco Totti rebuffing Real Madrid because “one title in Rome is worth ten at the Bernabeu”.
And now this change of heart. In times like these, top footballers feel as distant as ever from the rest of us. Hummels is a multimillionaire many times over. He has won silverware: two league titles and, of course, the 2014 World Cup. He plays for a young, exciting manager whose team have steamrollered much of the Bundesliga.
He is walking away to join their rivals with the added unknown of Carlo Ancelotti, a new coach who has never worked in Germany before and who may or may not have agreed to the move.
Advertisement
Had Hummels opted for a move abroad, dressing it up with talk of “new experiences” and leaving behind a fat transfer fee it would be easier to swallow. Instead, with a contract set to expire in June 2017, Dortmund are unlikely to receive anything close to market value. Such was the shock, there was even talk of forcing him to see out his contract and letting him walk as a free agent in 14 months’ time, just to prove a point.
It won’t happen. Instead, we’re left with further confirmation that social mobility is a chimera in the Bundesliga. And that genuine folk heroes — which Hummels could have been — are few and far between.