Well, it's settled. It'll be an all-German Champions final for the first time since the tournament began in 1955 capped today by Bayern Munich's 2-0 (7-0 on aggregate) victory over Barcelona preceded by Borussia Dortmund's win over Real Madrid the day before 0-2 (4-3 on aggregate).
The Bundesliga finally joins its three biggest rivals to achieve this feat: Spain's La Liga (2000), Italy's Serie A (2003) and England's Barclay Premier Leauge (2008).
It's interesting to observe that up to 2000, there were no "all-league" finals. And it's further interesting to note the "Big Four" leagues accomplished this in the last 13 years.
Bayern Munich, who blazed through a record setting Bundesliga title, will appear for the 10th time in a CL final seeking its 5th trophy with its most recent triumph in 2001. Only two teams other than Bayern (back in the 1970s) managed to win three CL titles in a row those being Real Madrid (5 in the 1950s) and Ajax (3 in the 70s). Internazionale, Benfica and Juventus reached three finals in a row but Inter and Benfica won two in a row while Juve managed a 1-2 record incidentally losing to Borussia Dortmund who won their first title in 1997 (3-1) over the highly-regarded Italians. Dortmund will be participating in their 2nd final. For what it's worth, other than the three and five-peats, Milan won back to back titles in 1989-1990 joining Inter and Benfica who each pulled it off in the 1960s.
As for leagues winning consecutive titles, it looks like this: England six in a row between 1977-82 (three different teams; three for Liverpool), Spain five 1955-60 (Real Madrid), Netherlands 1970-73 (Ajax, Feyenoord), Italy three in a row 1962-65 (Inter, Milan) and Germany 1974-76 (Bayern).
Last, Serie A teams reached the finals a record seven straight years (and nine in ten years from 1989 to 1998) between 1992-1998 winning three of those titles.
So that's sets the stage a tad.
To my mind, these are the two best teams in the tournament this year. Bayern, it should be noted, not only crushed Barca an astounding 7-0 over two legs, but defeated an over-achieving Juve 4-0 over two legs. That's 11-0 over two outstanding squads. Borussia's travels weren't as convincing but what they lacked in decisiveness they made up with drama and flair having pulled quite a comeback against Malaga in the quarter-finals.
As for Real and Barca, Real was more the threat this year than Barca. Truth is, Barca simply lucked out this year. They barely got past an inexperienced and young Milan squad who were to naive to shut Barca down and relied on the away-goals formula (4-4 on aggregate) to get past Paris St-Germain, who outside the Germans, were probably the most dangerous club in the tournament.
I do wish UEFA would come up with a better way to settle games. A tie is not a victory.
Two criticisms against Barca became glaringly apparent in the semis. The first, is the fact that while they have plenty of ball possession, they don't do a lot with it. It can be pretty at times but it's also exhausting. It's not practical unless you develop a youth academy that keeps groups of players together. However, it's not an unbeatable system. Nonetheless, Barca's dominance has been simply difficult to defeat - six semi-finals is nothing to sneer at.
The second is the over-reliance on Messi. Take him out of the picture and Barca is Spain and the false-nine. It's not as dominating a system as people think but it is in a winning trend at the moment. Inter showed this in 2010 by not only neutralizing Messi but by taking spaces away outright. Milan did it also in the first leg but failed to replicate the tactic in the 2nd leg for some reason other than inexperience. Mario Balotelli's absence, one would argue, may have proven bigger than we thought.
Messi has been dealing with a nagging injury and proved to be a non-factor against Bayern.
That being presented, it's hard to argue that the best 4-6 teams weren't in the hunt.
In my next post I will show some league stats for Europe's top leagues.
This post is already long in the pubic hair and I'm tired.
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