The problem for Bayern Munich is that it is so dominant in the Bundesliga that domestic success doesn’t really matter anymore. This season it will win its 10th successive league title. It’s not even especially close: Bayern is nine points clear with five games of the season remaining. That means Bayern will have won 31 of the 59 Bundesliga titles to have been contested. The second most successful team has won five. The Bundesliga has effectively become monopolized.
And that means its season comes down to the Champions League knockout stage. That is the only place where it meets a challenge, but what makes it difficult is that this is not a team used to being challenged. How does it deal with an opponent it cannot just overwhelm, particularly in the pressure of a knockout tie? And how does it deal with the fallout of quarterfinal disappointment in the form of a 2–1 aggregate defeat to Villarreal, the seventh-placed team in La Liga?
Last season, having breezed by Lazio in the round of 16, it came unstuck at home against PSG in the quarterfinals, its high line struggling to contain Kylian Mbappé as it lost 3–2 in the first leg. A 1–0 win in Paris wasn’t enough to avert an away-goals defeat. The high line, frankly, remains a problem. Hansi Flick, who had led Bayern to the Champions League the season before, left at the end of last season to take over as Germany’s national team manager and was replaced by Julian Nagelsmann.
