Ready for the final step

After thoroughly outplaying Barcelona, Bayern Munich are on the threshold of a remarkable triumph

When the finest team of this era is beaten to a pulp, everything that needs to be said is left on the field.  Or almost everything.

What Bayern Munich did to Barcelona in eight days – a rout of 7-0, home and away – is historic. It is something for all those teams, a legion of them, that Barca has toyed with and humiliated over the years.

“4-0 in Munich, 3-0 here, that’s terrific, a little bit history,” said Arjen Robben, the Bayern winger who scored the first, fabulous goal on Wednesday night. “Beating the world’s best team of the last five years, and doing it here at Camp Nou, what more do you want?” He knows what Bayern wants. For the third time in four years, the Muncheners will be playing in the Champions League final. Now they must win the thing — and win it against their fellow Bundesliga team, Borussia Dortmund, at Wembley Stadium.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” is the question that the French sports paper L’Equipe asked in advance of the all-German final in London on May 25.

You might need 12 languages to address the Bayern players in their native tongues, and a couple more to speak to some of Dortmund’s lineup.

That is as it should be. The barriers have broken, and it would be odd if German clubs did not spice up their teams with Brazilian flair, Dutch tactical nous, French panache and so many more variants as players move effortlessly across borders and cultures in the modern game.

Strike out that word effortlessly. The essence of Bayern and Borussia right now is more than a pooling of worldly talents. It is a conversion – a brainwashing, if you like – of these disparate players to get them to adapt to the German work ethic and team discipline.
It takes some believing to witness Robben and Franck Ribery running back, time and again, to help out their defence, then spring forward on their wings with unfettered creativity. Anyone who has followed the careers of either knows that defence did not come naturally to them. Someone had to convince them – and convince all the players at Munich – that work was beautiful, too.

That someone is the coach Jupp Heynckes. He turns 68 next Thursday, and he is being retired, seemingly against his inclination, after this season. Bayern’s board decided months ago that Pep Guardiola, the former coach of Barcelona, was their man going forward. Good luck to Guardiola if he can add anything to what “Old” Jupp has done this season.

Driven by failure to win the Champions League last year, Heynckes told the players there was only one way they could soothe the hurt they felt 12 months ago. “We had to be a real team, from back to front,” the coach said. “And we are that now, from back to front.” He glows, bright red, this young veteran.

He was on his feet, punching the air, when Robben cut inside Barca fullback Adriano just as the second half began. The experts say that you should never allow Robben to come within shooting range on his left foot, but how do you stop him when he is swifter than you, when he has the momentum, the balance, and the instinct? Whoosh, the Dutchman cuts in from the right and curls the ball with his left foot elegantly inside the furthest post.
No wonder his coach smiled. The rest was easy. Luis Gustavo flicked a pass out to Ribery on the left, Ribery danced past Dani Alves, and his cross panicked Gerard Pique into slashing the ball into his own net. The third, a trademark goal for Bayern, was an immaculate cross from Ribery met by a powerful header from Thomas Muller. Had Muller missed that one, you felt Heynckes was going to score it because he, a center forward in his playing days, couldn’t resist going through the heading motion on the sidelines.

That is the elixir, the drive, that keeps old pros competitive in their 50th year in the professional sport. Heynckes won’t say the word “retirement” even now. He is focused on May 25, on beating Dortmund, whose fearless attacking approach has forced Munich to reappraise its own standards at home and abroad.

But as Wednesday showed, there is a belief, bordering on arrogance, in Bayern Munich now. It runs through the German core of the side, from goalie Manuel Neuer through the captain Philip Lahm and the midfield powerhorse Bastian Schweinsteiger. And it almost obliges the foreigners to do as these Germans do.

“You have to defend as a team,” Robben said after the triumph in Barcelona. “Ja, we are very organised. Also the four players in the front work backwards because the most important thing is we play as a team.” That is the word of the week.

German teams have outplayed the two Spanish giants, Madrid and Barcelona. There is no single player in Germany as outstanding as Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi. But, alas for Spain, Ronaldo couldn’t find his form or free himself against Dortmund at the Santiago Bernabeu. And Messi had to sit and sulk on the bench on Wednesday because even he, the most effective and gifted player on earth, cannot tell an injured body to perform on command.

Barca is wounded without him, but not only him. Carles Puyol, Javier Mascherano, Sergio Busquets and Eric Abidal all were missing in defence. Barcelona properly saluted Munich’s superiority, but will never know whether it might have won this semifinal if it had been at full strength. Nor does anyone yet know whether Tito Vilanova, the coach stricken by cancer in midseason, knows how to piece Barcelona back together. He, and his president Sandro Rosell, face a difficult summer.

They must decide whether the acclaimed Barca academy can fill the gaps, or if the chequebook has to be opened, in central defence and possibly in attack, too. Not even Messi can carry the team, now that Bayern and Borussia have reset the standards.