How Borussia Dortmund are primed to take advantage of Bayern Munich’s waning ways

Almost immediately after stepping off the U6 underground line and on to the platform at Frottmaning in north Munich, street vendors’ stalls are already within sight.

It doesn’t take much effort to find the shirts and jumpers that display ‘Euer Hass ist unser Stolz’ – your hatred is our pride.

It represents a rather exclusive type of antagonism reserved for Bayern Munich in Germany, but pinpointing its exact beginning is rather difficult.

Perhaps it was during the 1970s when the Christian Social Union party did not make them subject to amusement tax while others were not exempted, or maybe in the 1980s when former Bayern manager Otto Rehhagel stated that the whole country always seemed to root for their opponents.

Either way, it has drawn commensurate rancour from the Bavarians.

“This man has stereotyped us as the enemy. We are the arrogant millionaires, they are the league’s underdogs,” Uli Hoeness is quoted as saying in the 1980s in his book Bayern: Creating a Global Superclub, about then opposite number Willi Lemke at Werder Bremen.

But while those statements seem to have been made in the most bullish and buoyant of terms, current striker Sandro Wagner’s remarks about Borussia Dortmund this week have rather more fearful undertones.

Bayern were recently beaten 3-2 by Lucien Favre’s Dortmund side in Der Klassiker, but the 30-year-old was adamant that the result altered very little in the Bundesliga’s contemporary hierarchy.

“I think we have by far the best team in Germany,” said Wanger.

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“Of course, Dortmund have played a couple of good games, but in my opinion we are the better team. We’re seven points behind – or four actually, because we have to beat Dortmund at the Allianz Arena in the second half of the season.

“It’s not a year of transition or upheaval: that’s all rubbish. I’m certain we’ll have a say in the title race and that we’ll win the league. We have to win the title.”

If last season is any gauge of the destination of the German title, then the former Hoffenheim striker’s comments do not appear as implausible as they do on the surface.

Bayern Munich were five points off the pace at one stage in October 2017 and still reeling after the sacking of Carlo Ancelotti the previous month.

However, fast-forward to the start of November and Jupp Heynckes had returned and Bayern had opened up a four-point gap at the summit of the Bundesliga table after defeating second-placed Dortmund 3-1 at Signal Iduna Park.

Bayern went on to win a sixth straight championship, but their revival coincided with the beginning of Dortmund’s problems. Peter Bosz’s tactical naivety became frequently exposed as he was often too stubborn to part from a 4-3-3 formation. A change came against Werder Bremen, with the Dutchman deploying a 3-4-3 set-up, but it proved to be too little too late.

Bosz was sacked hours after the loss to Bremen, but even more astounding was the decision to replace him with Peter Stoger, the man sacked by struggling (and eventually relegated) Cologne a week before.

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However, that managerial instability has been transferred to Bavaria, with Niko Kovac under continued immense scrutiny. In North Rhine-Westphalia, though, a footballing renaissance is under way thanks to the meticulous Favre, who has managed to rejuvenate Dortmund’s squad both on and off the training pitch.

Goalkeeper Marwin Hitz and full-backs Marcel Schmelzer and Lukasz Piszczek represent the only players in their 30s in Favre’s numerically-superior 29-man first-team squad, while Manuel Neuer, Robert Lewandowski and Wagner himself constitute three of the nine players on or over the same threshold in Niko Kovac’s squad.

Young French duo Dan-Axel Zagadou and Abdou Diallo have impressed at the heart of the Dortmund defence, and the turnaround at the other end of the pitch, after several inert performances under Stoger, has seen a combination of youth and experience bring flair back to the side.

With a combined tally of 12 Bundesliga goals between them, Jadon Sancho and Marco Reus have drawn the majority of the plaudits in Dortmund’s undefeated start to the campaign, particularly given the former’s youth and the latter’s troubles with injuries. The contributions of Paco Alcacer have not gone unnoticed either.

The Barcelona loanee has scored eight of Dortmund’s 33 league goals this season in just six appearances, with four of those coming from the bench.

Nine minutes after the Spaniard found space again to score the eventual winner against Bayern, Thomas Muller’s misery was brought to an end after he was substituted for Wagner.

Bayern’s own Raumdeuter – literally ‘interpreter of space’ – has managed just two goals in 10 league appearances and encapsulates the failure of the supporting cast to Lewandowski, who has bagged seven goals from the same number of games.

Wagner and Franck Ribery have failed to find the net this season, while Arjen Robben and Serge Gnabry have provided only limited support to the Polish marksman with a combined four league goals.

“At times you almost feel as if they relish these situations so much that they seek them out, knowing they possess the unusual ability to draw strength from hostility,” Hesse says of the nationwide Bayern hatred.

Except this time around, cracks have started to appear under the relentless pressure of ubiquitous hostility – with no Heynckes-shaped safety net in sight.