The weekend before last, the two teams who contested last year's Champions League final met in the German Cup Final in Berlin.
FC Bayern against Borussia Dortmund is a clash of two radically different club cultures. Dortmund put up posters around town saying things like "Sorry Berlin, things might get a leeeetle bit louder around here!" Bayern fans milled around the stadium wearing jackets with the slogan "Euer Hass ist unser Stolz" – your hate is our pride. The match would pit half the likely German World Cup team against the other half. This edition of the rivalry lacked the prestige of the 2013 European final at Wembley, but it was still a big game by any standards.
Yet anyone whose only exposure to football was the media build-up to the match might have concluded that 80,000 fans were converging on Berlin to watch some kind of prizefight between the two managers, Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp.
The pre-match focus was on Guardiola and how the match would affect the future of his “project” in Bavaria. The game was framed almost as a culture war between opposing ideologues. Possession versus counter-attack: which managerial philosophy would prove the stronger?
There was less talk about the men who would actually be on the field. The captains, Philipp Lahm and Sebastian Kehl, appeared with their coaches at the pre-match press conference, but the coaches did the talking.
Constant exposure
The rise of the manager is linked to the corporatisation of football that has drastically limited the media's access to players. Now players seldom speak and when they do they usually know better than to say anything.
The manager, by contrast, is contractually obliged to speak nearly every day, and through constant exposure he assumes an outsized importance. He becomes the public embodiment of his club. With real information about what is happening in the dressing room scarce, inferences about the health of the team are drawn from the manager’s facial expressions and tone of voice.
The actual football sometimes seems like a distraction from the ongoing fascination of managerial psychoanalysis.
At the final, the managers were the outstanding performers. Klopp is a hulking Papa Bear of the sideline, a fountainhead of positive energy in a black and yellow tracksuit and fluorescent baseball cap. He stomps about in chunky trainers and pats all the players on the ass. Guardiola, wiry and elegant in a dark grey suit and wine V-neck jumper, alternates between mysterious brooding and grandiose gesticulation. When he is in full flow he resembles less a mere football manager and more an orchestral maestro like Von Karajan or Furtwängler.
The difference between Von Karajan and Guardiola is that the orchestra played exactly what Von Karajan had in mind, while the footballers, chasing and sweating in the rain, can produce only a crude approximation of Guardiola’s vision.
So the opposing managerial philosophies, so crystalline in the abstract, could in practice be glimpsed only in outline. Bayern had more of the ball, but did little with it. Dortmund tried to break quickly when they won it back, but their attacking lacked precision. It was a terrible game.
The chaos eventually generated a conclusion via two unexpected events. First, the referee didn't see that a header by Dortmund's Mats Hummels had crossed the line before being booted clear. Then, the Dortmund goalkeeper Roman Weidenfeller botched a throw out, and Jerome Boateng sent a quick cross back into the area for Arjen Robben to score the winner, as he had done last year at Wembley.
So the match was ultimately decided by two completely random events. And because the randomness had favoured Guardiola, he could go on holiday without half the German press speculating that his project is a failure and he should be sacked.
Expensive players
When all was said and done, the salient fact was that the richer team with the more expensive players won the game, just as they had at Wembley. Modern-day managers may talk a lot but money talks louder than any of them. More and more, money is the only voice that matters.
The trend is clear from the history of Europe’s main competition. In the 10 European Cup finals from 1983 to 1992, the trophy was won by teams from eight countries: Germany, England, Italy, Romania, Portugal, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia and Spain.
Compare that to the last 10 years, when all the winners have come from either England, Spain, Germany or Italy. In the last 20 years, only Ajax and Porto have come from outside those countries to win it.
The 2014 Champions League final was a near-rerun of 2013's – two clubs from the same country, the underdogs led by an inspirational manager, the favourites packed with world-class players. For all the cunning and charisma of Diego Simeone, Real Madrid wore down and overpowered his team in extra-time because their €522 million squad had deeper reserves of firepower than his €79 million squad.
The worst part about the new reality for underdogs is that after they lose, they are immediately cannibalised by the big dogs. The two best attackers in the Dortmund squad that reached the final last year now play for Bayern. Atletico will soon lose their brilliant goalkeeper and their top scorer. So the underdogs die off and the self-perpetuating elite grows stronger. If Klopp and Simeone ever want to win the biggest cup, their best bet is to follow their players’ example and switch sides.
