Reasons for Borussia Dortmund to Believe They Can Rival Bayern Munich

It ended as it always seems to end, with an ebullient Thomas Muller celebrating. There were moments in the low-key celebrations that followed Sunday’s German Super Cup triumph for Bayern Munich in which it seemed like Muller was the only man left in Signal Iduna Park. He skidded across the pitch with the trophy, not for a minute put off to by the relatively sheepish reluctance of his team-mates, whom he had merrily danced around as they waited for the silverware to be handed over.

All power to him. Muller, we know, endured a pretty frustrating time at Euro 2016, in a competition where his finals goalscoring record is starkly juxtaposed to his golden touch in the FIFA World Cup.

It must have felt good to burst back into the winners’ enclosure that he knows so well, particularly as it meant Bayern getting off to a good start under Carlo Ancelotti, snaring a bauble that had impertinently eluded his predecessor, Pep Guardiola, in his three years at the helm.

Yet there were plenty of reasons to believe that the status quo at the top of the Bundesliga can be challenged this season.

It had been far from business as usual as Borussia Dortmund dominated the first half—in terms of momentum, territory and statistics—against a Bayern side who were uncharacteristically careless in possession, and for whom Mats Hummels looked uncertain on his return to Westfalen. It frequently appeared that his replacement, Marc Bartra, was consciously targeting him with long passes through the Germany centre-back’s channel, swept down early, in the manner of Gerard Pique.

The teenager Ousmane Dembele was highly complicit in Hummels’ uncomfortable evening, springing up in that gap behind the centre-back on the right side of Bayern’s defence or dribbling from deep at pace. With Sebastian Rode (like Hummels, quickly reacquainted with his former club) snapping and snarling in midfield, this new Dortmund looked impressive. That they eventually failed to close the game out didn’t obscure the overall impression of genuine competition between the two sides.

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It mattered, of course. “You always want to win every game you play against Borussia Dortmund,” said Manuel Neuer after the game, speaking to Bundesliga.com. That much was evident in a game that was fiercely contested—certainly for the first hour or so, when the home side appeared near their peak physical power. They faded afterwards, with Arturo Vidal’s opener for Bayern appearing to sap the energy of Thomas Tuchel’s side considerably.

That shouldn’t be too surprising, perhaps, given Tuchel’s comments after the recent friendly with Athletic Bilbao that his team had looked “tired” after a particularly intensive spell of training, as per BVB’s official website. With players returning from Euro 2016 duty at a different stage of fitness to those already a month into their preparation, Tuchel had warned that “it would be very much in our interest not to set our expectations too high for Sunday.”

An extremely strong-looking bench featured their Euro participants, including Julien Weigl and new boys Mario Gotze, Raphael Guerreiro, Andre Schurrle and Emre Mor.

Gotze, whose prospective second debut against the club he just left was the subject of much anticipation, was judged not fit enough for a runout, as was also the case with European champion Guerreiro. All five, plus fellow substitute Roman Weidenfeller and midfielder Nuri Sahin, started in a friendly at Sandhausen on Monday.

This gives you an idea of—as Tuchel pre-warned—what a work in progress Dortmund are. The potential is considerable, especially when one considers the attacking riches available, with Dembele already ready to take responsibility on the pitch and his fellow teenager Mor shining in pre-season.

Marco Reus is due back in training after the injury that deprived him of the Euros, and there is understandable anticipation about the renewal of his link-up with his close friend Gotze.

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Mouth-watering as the prospect of all this may be, this state of flux is as good a reason as any to make Bayern big title favourites again, in addition to all the usual ones about their titanic strength. They are far more settled. The line-up that took the field on Sunday was a strong one, and a familiar one.

Ancelotti seems like the perfect man to pick up the slack, too, an urbane shepherd of elite talent, rather than a revolutionary. Yet the sense in the Super Cup, despite their ability to eke out the right result, was that Bayern are experiencing a period of readjustment, too. There were aspects that you would expect to be different; less in-game tactical adjustment, with a pretty straight 4-3-3 used, for example.

Few would have been prepared, however, for the drop in circulation of the ball and—in particular—the drop in intensity. Maybe this is inevitable post-Guardiola. Few share his obsession with every detail, and his constant demanding. There is a sense that many at Bayern have already warmed to Ancelotti’s more human, sensitive approach, with Guardiola respected but not universally popular at the Allianz Arena, especially towards the end of his reign.

It was hard not to wonder on Sunday what cost this might have on the pitch. This is an early stage to make sweeping judgements, but Bayern are used to wholesale domination. To use a straight comparison, they were far more impressive in last year’s Super Cup match at Wolfsburg than they were here, despite ultimately losing on penalties.

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Such is the smoothness of Ancelotti in front of the media, allied to the focus on the main goal of bringing the Champions League trophy back to Bavaria, that it’s easy to overlook the fact that a coach with such a rich pedigree has won just three league titles in the two decades that he’s been coaching, most of those spent with giants of the European game.

There’s no cause for panic yet, of course, with coach and players still getting used to each other, the internationals still to shake off their post-tournament cobwebs, and formidable talent including Jerome Boateng, Douglas Costa, Arjen Robben and the outstanding Renato Sanches still to come in.

Yet there was encouragement here for Dortmund. There was, arguably, a glimmer of possibility for Bayer Leverkusen, too. It is hard to classify Roger Schmidt’s side as serious title contenders, but having held on to most of their mainstays, added Kevin Volland and finished last season like a juggernaut, they could at least be in a position to take advantage of any early-season teething problems that the big two have.

Bayern and Dortmund will, inevitably, still lead from the front—probably for years, given the relative youth of their recent signings. The Super Cup is rarely indicative of the course of the season to come, but there was enough suggestion of shifting boundaries to at least allow us hope of title race for now.