There are those who saw off the branch they are sitting on and those who do not.

frafiomatale (78)in #sports • 16 days ago

_{Immagine realizzata con Leonardo.ai}

This is the English version of the post C'è chi sega il ramo su cui è seduto e chi no, originally published in Italian in the ITALY community.

Strange league, the Bundesliga—a tournament that most of the time seems to start with a designated winner even before the opening whistle is blown, yet still manages to collect, in terms of television rights and sponsorships, figures far higher than our supposedly “competitive” Serie A.

In Germany, twelve of the last thirteen championships have been won by Bayern Munich, with the only exception being Bayer Leverkusen under Xabi Alonso, who managed to break this dominance in 2024. And we are not talking about hard-fought titles decided point by point, but tournaments that were most often already settled by March.

The Bavarians have won 34 of the 62 editions of the Bundesliga—more than half—and with an eleven-point lead over their rivals Borussia Dortmund, they are preparing to push that statistic even higher this year. In short, if we want to attempt a bold comparison, Bayern Munich in Germany represents what Juventus represents in Italy: the historic and absolute dominator of the competition.

_{A trophy room at the J-Museum, the Juventus museum. Evelyn Hill from Rome, Italy, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons}

However, there is a fundamental difference between us and our German cousins in the way football is conceived. Over there it is considered entertainment meant to involve the whole family, not a kind of gang war as football is often approached in our country.

It is no coincidence that in Germany refereeing controversies are practically nonexistent, and when they do occur they are nowhere near comparable to the psychodramas we witness in Italy. There are no score-settling ambushes between fans at highway service areas, nor national newspapers openly acting as cheerleaders for one club or another.

But most importantly, in the Bundesliga there is no trace of hostile prosecutors or federation presidents (or league presidents) acting as snipers against inconvenient clubs while protecting friendly ones. The sporting prosecutor does not proceed at two different speeds—extremely slowly for some and at lightning speed for others—just as the sporting judge does not take action by looking first at the color of the jersey rather than at the facts.

_{Words publicly spoken by prosecutor Ciro Santoriello, who opened the Prisma investigation into capital gains against Juventus}

In other words, if in Italy football is a bit like a river that gets diverted here or there depending on convenience (in reality almost always in the same direction), in Germany that river is allowed to flow freely according to nature, and everyone lets events unfold as destiny has written them without trying to manipulate the outcome.

If a team is clearly stronger than the others—as is the case with Bayern Munich—no one thinks about inventing systems or building trials in order to change the course of history and favor teams that probably would never have been able to win on their own.

The result? Today Bayern Munich is a powerhouse not only in Germany but also across Europe, and the Bundesliga, even if predictable and apparently boring, generates almost double the revenue of the supposedly “thrilling” Serie A. The direct comparison between the Bavarians and the last Italian club still alive in the Champions League, Atalanta, proved merciless last night. And perhaps even more painful than the humiliating 6–1 final score was the comparison between the players on the field, who for long stretches looked like athletes from two completely different sports.

_{Werner100359, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons}

Every single footballer sitting on Bayern Munich’s bench last night in Bergamo would start in any lineup in our league and in many cases would also be the best player in the squad. We are talking about a level that at the moment seems unreachable—yet Italian football had approached (and perhaps even surpassed) that level twice in the past, before, as mentioned earlier, the course of events was forcibly altered from above to benefit those who never managed to win.

The Juventus side before the farce of Calciopoli, but also Milan, another team penalized by that sporting trial built to advantage their Inter cousins, were consistently among the top five European clubs in terms of revenue, behind only (and by a small margin) Real Madrid and Manchester United.

Italian football competed on equal footing with the biggest realities in Europe, and the national team was preparing to become world champion for the fourth time right there in Germany, fielding talents and absolute champions who today seem almost mythical: Del Piero, Totti, Cannavaro, Pirlo, and Buffon.

_{An image from the 2006 World Cup final between Italy and France, with a total of 8 Juventus players on the pitch out of 22. Pixel-Sepp, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons}

Today, also following the second diversion of the “river” caused by the so-called capital-gains trial (which, exactly like twenty years earlier, once again penalized only Juventus, even in the presence of far more serious facts committed elsewhere), the scenario is completely reversed: no Serie A team is competitive at the level of Europe’s top competition, and the national team has not participated in a World Cup for twelve years.

How would things have gone if the river had not been diverted? What would Italian football look like today if the duel between Juventus and Milan had not been artificially replaced with that between Inter and Roma or Napoli? No one on this earth can claim to know with certainty—but looking at Bayern Munich last night, we can probably begin to imagine the answer.