German football has always been strong, a fact duly epitomised by the stellar performances of the national team in the major championships down the years. But it appears that the domestic game is thriving more than ever before, with the Bundesliga going from strength to strength.
Back in the 1980s, Italian football was to the fore, with Serie A clubs such as AC Milan and Juventus ruling the European roost for the most part. Then, the advent of the Premiership in the early 90s turned attention – and cash - towards English clubs as the cream of Europe’s footballers revelled in the new-found prosperity in blighty for a while.
The Bundesliga was the strongest league later that decade, however, although the emergence of Barcelona and Real Madrid – coupled with the unparalleled success of the Spanish national side – meant that attention was focused on La Liga during the noughties for the most part.
Italian football’s apparent pre-occupation for match-fixing continues to cause untold damage to more than it's reputation. Despite Inter Milan’s Champions League success a couple of years back, most league sides are a pale shadow of what they were just a few years ago.
Even though the fact that Spain’s big two, Barcelona and Real Madrid, provide unmatched glamour and artistry, most of the La Liga sides are crippled by debt. And the country’s top players have shown solidarity by threatening strike action due to unpaid wages in the lower leagues.
As for the Premiership, last season’s thrilling title race has been quickly forgotten amid England’s failure to trouble the big guns during the European Championships, and the ugly spectre of racism that has cast a bleak shadow across the domestic game this season to date.
Meanwhile, it may have almost gone unnoticed that, during the most recent week of European matches, six of the seven Bundesliga sides competing won their matches, with Dortmund’s win against Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid the pick of the bunch.
A quick assessment, however, would suggest this impressive success rate was no fluke – the Bundesliga could lay claim to be in particularly rude health at the moment. Whilst no German side has lifted the Champions League since Bayern Munich back in 2001, that relatively barren spell may be close to an end.
Attendances in Germany’s top league dwarf the others – an average of 42,500 is much healthier than the Premiership’s 36,000, La Liga’s 29,000 and Serie A’s miserly 22,000.
Prices, too, are much more affordable for fans. Take Borussia Dortmund’s ‘Yellow Wall’ stand, which houses no fewer than 26,000 fans, the biggest of its type in the world. Fans there watch games for an astonishingly modest sum of 13 Euros, not bad considering the match ticket doubles up as a free rail pass to take you to and from the game.
That clubs are forced to limit the number of season tickets sold in order to ensure a wider section of fans can attend matches (and at least 10% of seats must be offered to away supporters), it’s easy to see that the German football beaks are enjoying the benefits of putting the needs of supporters first, particularly given these challenging economic times.
The business model, too, is a good one, with clubs paying less than 50% of revenue in players’ wages (contrast that with the Premiership’s 60+ percentage), and enjoying the fruits of a turnover of 1.7 billion Euros thanks to increasing match day revenue, sponsorship receipts and broadcasting income.
The net result? Germany is the only European country where the clubs in the top league posted a collective profit last season.
On the pitch, the country clearly received a lift by hosting the 2006 World Cup, and the full national side is now reaping the benefits of a concerted effort to develop its young players. Indeed, the top clubs all run youth academies, at a collective spend of a cool 75 million Euros per annum.
It’ll be interesting to observe the progress of German clubs in Europe this season, but already some of the clubs are making their mark. Manchester City fans will still be coming to terms with being outplayed by the aforementioned Dortmund at home – how City escaped with a point from that fixture remains a mystery, but in any case you wouldn’t bet on Roberto Mancini’s men being quite so fortunate when they make the return trip.
Schalke sit atop group B – Arsenal having been put to the sword recently – and Bayern Munich, as ever, are healthily placed to ensure they enter the knock-out stages of Europe’s premier competition.
Overall, German football is in a good place at the moment, and you wouldn’t bet against its emergence as the powerhouse of European club football being felt when the European prizes are being handed out towards the end of this season.