Bayern, Bundesliga, Ballon d'Or
Whether or not Lewandowski deserved the Ballon d'Or, Bayern Munich's dominance in Germany did his chances no favours
I don’t want to get into who deserved to win the Ballon d’Or, there’s no more boring form of football discourse. But Lionel Messi’s seventh triumph, this time over Robert Lewandowski, was met with outrage in Germany, so it only felt right to address that ahead of what should be a huge Bundesliga weekend for the Pole and Bayern Munich.
How cruel that a football team, hand-in-hand with its players, can be so dominant that they render their own achievements irrelevant in the eyes of so many.
Lionel Messi is no unworthy Ballon d’Or winner and certainly not a surprise one. Even with Barcelona’s well-documented struggles he was the top scorer in LaLiga last season, led the club to a cup win, and dominated the Copa América. His winning of the Ballon d’Or has been dismissed as “robbery” but he had another special year, we’re just far too used to seeing him have one of those.
Which brings us nicely to Bayern Munich. A spectacular treble-winning 2020 saw Robert Lewandowski outscore any other player in Europe, a feat he has repeated in 2021 despite Bayern’s struggles to add another Champions League or DFB Pokal to yet another Bundesliga title.
The problem for Lewandowski is that, like with Messi, we are more than just desensitised to Bayern’s achievements: the extent of their dominance in Germany actively puts people off of the league and, by extension, puts them off seeing just how good Lewandowski has become.
The Pole set a new Bundesliga record for goals in a season in 2020/21, scoring 41 goals (33 without penalties) in just 29 appearances. He has continued in the same vein this season, scoring 14 goals (12 non-penalty goals) in 13 matches.
But the rest of the world doesn’t seem entirely convinced that those feats are all that impressive. That or it doesn’t care. And why would it? German football has a relevance and image issue at best, at worst it has a chronic quality issue and a domestic league that only one club can realistically have ambitions to win.
The irony is the timing of this award, coming just days before Bayern’s trip to Dortmund, one of the few games where all eyes will be on Lewandowski and any goals will actual be seen and appreciated around the world. But only fleetingly. Dortmund are Bayern’s biggest challengers once again this season but it would, like usual, be a shock if they beat them at home on Saturday evening. It would be a massive surprise if they did that and it had any meaning come May; no matter how the match pans out, it will be hard work to find any regular watcher of the league who expects anything but a tenth successive Bayern title come May.
This phenomenon is not exclusive to the league. The Bundesliga is set to have no teams other than Bayern in the knockout rounds of this year’s Champions League and RB Leipzig (2020) are the only German side other than Bayern to reach a Champions League semi-final since the all-German final of 2013. Bayern, as if their superiority in Germany needed more underlining, have made five semi-final appearances in eight attempts since then.
And when a team dominates so comfortably, it is always going to take away from their success.
Robert Lewandowski’s achievements are entirely diluted by the lack of tension that surrounds them. There are no performances so impressive that they stand out to a global audience that just sees the Bayern juggernaut winning yet another league title. There are no domestic records that Lewandowski could break that would force the world to take notice. Bayern are so impressively dominant that they end up inadvertently diminishing their own achievements.
That won’t be much consolation for Lewandowski, the club, or fans of either. Unfortunately for them, a tenth Bundesliga title in a row wouldn’t be either. That’s pretty much the problem in a nutshell.