Bayern Munich Are Clear Early Favourites for This Season's Champions League

It was a beating, a hammering, a humiliation, and it could have been a lot worse. Bayern Munich have handed out some punishment to domestic and European rivals alike—after all, they were fresh from a 5-0 victory over Dinamo Zagreb in the Champions League—but Sunday’s dismantling of Borussia Dortmund was a statement of intent, even by the standards of Pep Guardiola’s side.

A team that arrived revitalised and unbeaten under Thomas Tuchel left chastened, with their tails between their legs. If the nascent nature of the former Mainz coach’s new project was laid bare by a plethora of mistakes, the visitors were simply unfortunate to face Bayern, the most ruthless exposers of any frailties.

If the 5-1 scoreline sounds brutal, the reality is that this was not Bayern at full throttle. They only really went hard for five-minute spells at a time. This may have been aided by Dortmund’s defensive horror show, but also by Bayern's knowledge that they could pull away at any given moment. The breathtaking combination between Mario Gotze and Robert Lewandowski for the fourth goal underlined just how big the gap between the champions and the rest is.

Nobody in Europe wins the Champions League in autumn, of course, but after eight successive wins to begin the Bundesliga season and the last possible realistic domestic challenger to Bayern licking their wounds, it’s natural that thoughts are already turning to continental matters.

That fact that the DFL-Supercup is the one trophy Guardiola has participated in that has escaped his grasp is an anomaly you'd suspect he pays little mind to. The lack of a Champions League since pitching up in Munich in summer 2013 will hurt much more, not least because it creates a nagging doubt about the Catalan’s work and legacy in Bavaria when so much of what he’s achieved since arriving has been simply stellar.

Judging Guardiola on the failure to at least reach last season’s final in Berlin, however, is neither just nor reasonable. It may seem trite for a club of Bayern’s size to complain about injuries, but the extent of absentees in last season’s closing stages simply beggared belief.

There was no way that Bayern could adapt or try different things against opponents, because there simply was not the variety of personnel with which to do so. In their last Bundesliga encounter with Dortmund before Sunday, the 1-0 win at Signal Iduna Park in April, the team’s style was alarmingly direct. Using Lewandowski as the player whom everything went through was the only option.

Bypassing a midfield with plenty of quality but lacking real zip or energy had become a tempting tactic. The difficulties of Bastian Schweinsteiger—who was a virtual ever-present in the run-in—for Manchester United in Sunday’s defeat at Arsenal backed up Guardiola’s (perhaps unnecessarily cruel) assessment on his departure that “during the last three years he was never in good condition,” as per the Guardian.

It also underlined why the powers at Bayern were so keen to accelerate their plan of making the squad younger. It was something that CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge spoke about to Owen Hargreaves quite candidly in the BT Sport documentary Inside Bayern Munich, back in spring (see below).

A heavy reliance on Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery was clearly something that Rummenigge had in mind, but the struggles of that final part of last season probably sped up the desire to freshen other areas as well, even if the situation meant the long-awaited return of Thiago Alcantara turned into a full-on workout rather than a gentle easing back into the frame. 

A constant theme in Marti Perarnau’s book Pep Confidential is Guardiola’s frustration that he can’t get all his talent in midfield—the area he constantly refers to in his talks with Perarnau as the most important in the team—fit at the same time. Something had to give, and it is noticeable that of the six players to exit on a permanent basis in the summer, four (Schweinsteiger, Dante, Pepe Reina and Claudio Pizarro) were 30 or over.

Douglas Costa, a relative stripling at 25, has been an instant hit, as has Arturo Vidal (28). The Chilean was only needed as a substitute on Sunday, but it was noticeable that the other two replacements used in the second half were Joshua Kimmich (20) and Kingsley Coman (19), who are young players Guardiola is demonstrating his faith in.

Alexander Hassenstein/Associated Press

Kimmich and Coman could be key in that final sprint of the season, the segment of the campaign that has let Bayern down in both of Guardiola’s two seasons at the club to date. Much of the talk accompanying the hammering of Dortmund was of how much better Bayern can become when they recuperate the current injured, like Robben, Ribery and Medhi Benatia.

Yet in playing like this, Bayern showed that they, and Guardiola, are ready to face the challenges ahead of them without some of their biggest players, if need be. There is no doubt that Robben will flourish again—remember, this is a player who is one of the world’s best, and he hit a career-best 17 goals in 20 Bundesliga starts last season before being sidelined.

Ribery is another matter entirely, having started just nine Bundesliga matches last season and having been eclipsed in recent months by new boy Costa’s excellence and energy. The versatility displayed by the Brazilian at his previous club Shakhtar Donetsk, where he played on both sides and as a No. 10, means that there is a way of fitting everybody in when Ribery returns.

The question at the moment is: why would Guardiola want to change it about too much? Having blown away Wolfsburg and now Dortmund in their last two domestic home fixtures, Bayern are in perfect fettle. One has to fear for Arsenal in the forthcoming Champions League double-header between the sides, even taking into account the Gunners’ recent improvements in the Premier League.

Bayern are hungry and are settling down for the long haul. As things stand, it is hard to deny their Champions League credentials, as Guardiola readies himself to scratch that itch.