After lording the Bundesliga for the past 11 years, Bayern Munich have crashed back to earth. Other than ceding the German top-flight trophy, the Bavarian giants have also missed out on the DFB Pokal and the Champions League, making 2023-24 their first season without a single trophy in quite some time.
While many were surprised that this happened to Bayern Munich, this felt inevitable for a while given the internal turmoil they’ve been through the past few years.
And with head coach Thomas Tuchel leaving the club this summer, there’s a huge cloud of uncertainty looming at the Allianz Arena, so the front office will have their work cut out for them.
Bayern Munich and their fans will do a lot of reflecting on this horrific campaign by their lofty standards, and here is our take as to what went wrong for them.
No, it’s not Harry Kane’s fault
Harry Kane came to Bayern Munich to win trophies, but it hasn’t happened in his first year. And now he is being ridiculed for bringing his “Tottenham curse” to Bavaria, which is a lazy take, if we’re being honest.
The English national team captain has done his part since he is a huge upgrade from Sadio Mane, who was a major bust for Bayern Munich last season. With so many Bundesliga 2024 highlights, Harry Kane is going to win the Bundesliga Golden Boot this season with 36 goals and eight assists, and overall, he has 44 goals and 12 assists in all competitions.
Rather than blame Kane, Bayern Munich fans should point to the inconsistencies of his supporting cast this season, particularly from the backline.
Injuries certainly didn’t help, but Mattihjs de Ligt, Kim Min-Jae, and Dayot Upamecano have been underwhelming this season. Kim was exposed against Real Madrid in the Champions League semi-finals, while de Ligt was unable to get rhythm, especially when he was being displaced in the starting XI by Eric Dier, who joined the club via loan in January.
Thomas Tuchel is also culpable as to why Bayern Munich are not at their best this season. And the best example of this is when he converted Joshua Kimmich to a full-time right-back instead of playing the No. 6 role, which he has shown he is more than capable of doing when the team kept winning domestic titles.
While Kimmich playing right-back isn’t exactly the worst idea in the world, replacing him with Aleksandar Pavlovic, an unproven young defencive midfielder, instead of someone like Konrad Laimer certainly didn’t do Tuchel any favours.
Abrupt high-level changes doomed them from the start
Bayern Munich dominated the Bundesliga this past decade because they were one of, if not the most stable, teams in Germany. They can thank former executives Oliver Kahn and Hasan Salihamidzic for that, but since they were sacked, their absences have never been more felt this year.
The Bavarian giants are known to be swift and prudentwith their transfer business, but that wasn’t the case at the beginning of the 2023-24 campaign.
Harry Kane’s €100 million switch to Bayern Munich took a lot longer than it should since he was only signed a few days before the German Supercup, while Joao Palhinha was a missed target for them to refresh their midfield.
Overall, since last winning the Champions League in 2019-20, Bayern Munich oversaw the departures of Javi Martinez, Jerome Boateng, David Alaba, Thiago Alcantara, and Robert Lewandowski, and their recruitment was not fast enough to make suitable replacements while they spent roughly €450 million in the process.
Their Bundesliga successes since then may have masked Bayern Munich’s internal problems, but now it has reared his ugly head.
Bayer Leverkusen were just too good
After years of waiting, Bayern Munich finally met their match in Xabi Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen, who defied the SBOTOP Bundesliga 2024 odds by remaining undefeated across all competitions to this day, making them a prime candidate for potentially winning a historic treble.
When Bayer Leverkusen were on top of the Bundesliga standings in December, they never looked back. After their 2-2 draw in their reverse fixture in September, Die Werkself won 3-0 against Die Bayern in February, which essentially signified that there’s a new sheriff in town. Although it’s unlikely that Bayer Leverkusen will go on a run like this next season, it is clear that they are going to contend for the Bundesliga title in years to come, so Bayern Munich will have to act fast and make drastic changes if they have plans to reclaim their crown.
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