Play-offs won't fix a broken Bundesliga
It has been suggested that German football could adopt a US-style approach to crowning champions.
Less than a week after Bayern Munich stretched their lead at the top of the Bundesliga to nine points, a system change that would see the title winners decided by play-offs is being talked about.
Nine titles in a row and a tenth on the way, Bayern Munich are the beneficiaries of a broken German football landscape.
This always becomes a sensitive and divisive topic. Say the sentence above and Bayern fans tend to get defensive, explaining that it isn’t their fault that other teams can’t keep up with them.
Let’s be clear: of course Bayern Munich should do their very best to be as dominant as possible. Win as often and as convincingly as possible, that’s the name of the game. The real question is whether or not it should it even be possible for them (or anyone else) to dominate to the extent they do?
Rival fans, naturally, resent Bayern’s unprecedented dominance. The biggest club in Germany have always been resented for being just that but it has never been the issue it is now.
Including the 2020s, Bayern are set to win a tenth consecutive Bundesliga title.
Could other clubs be doing better? Absolutely. Does that mean this system is correct? Of course not. In order to deny Bayern, any other club in Germany must do everything perfectly AND hope it all coincides with a year the champions slip up. The highest non-Bayern points tally of the last nine years was Borussia Dortmund’s 78 in 2015/16. That would’ve been enough to win them the Bundesliga in 0 of the past 9 seasons but would have won the title in 46 of the 69 Bundesliga seasons before then.
The situation is not the same as it ever was.
Bayern have an enormous financial advantage over every other club in Germany, just as Dortmund have one over every club that isn’t Bayern Munich. The gap widens every year and that process has been accelerated further still by the pandemic.
Bayern’s position at the top of German football becomes increasingly entrenched every year, with the club collecting a bigger share of the prize money pot than anyone else for both their domestic and European exploits.
This isn’t their fault and it isn’t to say they don’t deserve that money, but the current system isn’t fit for purpose. It only harms the chances of the league becoming more competitive. Something drastic does need to change.
So what next, as Bayern close in on their tenth title in a row? The answer really could be a play-off system.
“Of course, the league would be more attractive if it had more competition at the top,” new DFL CEO Donata Hopfen told Bild. “If play-offs help us, then we'll talk about play-offs.”
Kicker reported on Thursday that this really could happen and even Bayern themselves appear to be on board.
“I think it's exciting to consider new formats such as play-offs for the Bundesliga. A new format will also take effect in the Champions League from 2024, and we have high hopes for it,” said Oliver Kahn.
“A format in the Bundesliga with semi-finals and finals would mean excitement for the fans. So it makes sense to consider such an idea. We at FC Bayern are always open to new ideas.”
More variety when it comes to silverware would certainly be welcome but would this idea get off of the ground?
Firstly, we already have play-offs, we call them cups and Bayern win the German one most years but not every year.
Anyway, would fans buy into watching a 34-game season when, ultimately, it all comes down to a few one-off matches at the end? Where’s the tension for a team comfortably in the top three or four with 10 games remaining?
There are league campaigns in American sports but they don’t see every single each team play each other an equal number of times, home and away. Play-offs are needed to round off a campaign. There’s also a space for the variety and unpredictability they offer because American sports don’t have cup competitions. Then you add in the fact the leagues are closed and have draft systems, allowing teams to tank, rebuild, and plan long-term. The smartest and most well-run organisations can dream big with all that in place, that aspect of the setup just doesn’t translate to football in Europe.
We want solutions to fix a broken league but this isn’t it. Nobody will want to watch the weeks of dead rubbers leading up to the play-offs and, as long as every team plays each other twice, crowning a “champion” that wins the play-offs but finishes 10 or 20 points off at the end of the league campaign itself would just feel unjust. Or just crowning Bayern anyway. After all, they’ve won seven Bundesliga games against Dortmund in a row, scoring 26 times in those matches.
Bayern’s openness to the change is an interesting admission that they need things to change. Bayern need a more interesting Bundesliga. They need it to keep eyes on the league, to keep revenues high, and to keep attracting the world’s best players. But it would be nice if they did a little more about it: some of the club’s fans have criticised Bayern for not offering to take a smaller cut of television revenues generated by the league.
The biggest simple change that could be made to the Bundesliga would see competition prize money split completely equally, regardless of performance, and possibly some sort of wage cap. Bayern would still dominate seasons but the focus shouldn’t be on whether or not they would be fighting for the title, but on the gap between them and the rest. If that gap closes financially it would close on the pitch, and teams that manage to beat them once every five years might be them once every three or four years instead.
Such a change wouldn’t catapult any teams up the league but it would see ‘smaller’ clubs have the money . A few million more a year may not be much to Bayern but to most in Germany it would help them either sign or keep players that significantly improve them.
Such a change would chip away at Bayern’s advantage over the chasing pack. Maybe it wouldn’t take an astounding 84 points to pip them to the title but 78 or 80 (still more than anyone but Dortmund has ever recorded) instead.
Suddenly a six-point lead, as Bayern had this time last week, would no longer look entirely insurmountable. Suddenly there would be a glimmer of hope that the race is alive whenever Bayern drop points.
And that’s all we need for a more interesting league. Bayern would still win it almost every year, but the Bundesliga needs to strive for a competition worthy of the name. Make the Rekordmeister work for their titles, offer some hope sweat a little any time they drop points and the league would immediately become more interesting for everyone. That’s something that, as Kahn has admitted, even interests the champions.