There have been a handful of teams in the past that have terrorized their opponents to the core. If we shake our memory branch, Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona or even Zinedine Zidane’s Champions League-winning Real Madrid, have both dominated their rivals so much that the matters were considered one-sided only.
However, when we speak about complete domination, the German giants Bayern Munich cannot be left out of the conversation. Barcelona fans are well aware of Bayern’s monstrosity. Even though the Bavarians have managed only two Champions League trophies in the past decade, their endeavours in the Bundesliga have been noteworthy.
Bayern has completely exercised control in the domestic league, with no other team coming close to lifting the title. The closest that any team has manoeuvred around Bayern is Borussia Dortmund, who mostly fell short after a strong start in the league.
The fans have slowly termed Bundesliga as a one-horse race devoid of any competitiveness or eagerness from other teams to fight Bayern. In a recently published article by The Athletic, a sports journalist named Michael Cox skilfully brought this trait up. He was clearly of the impression that if such an event goes on, every football fanatic would stop watching Bundesliga altogether, much as he has now.
However, Cox has come up with a solution to Bundesliga’s one champion problem only. His idea is that from this season, Bayern should start every game in the domestic league with one goal down.
The scoreline at the start should reflect 1-0 in the opposition’s favour. Only if such a rule is applied, there will be a valid chance for the teams in the Bundesliga to go head to head with Bayern and by the end of the season, German football will have a new champion to the crown.
In this article, Cox applied his analogy to the Bundesliga seasons of the past decade. The results as per him would see Bayern only winning the league on three occasions and other teams would have taken the crown on seven occasions.
Even though his idea is absurd and will never see the light of the day, it was incendiary enough to get Football Twitter talking. Here are the 6 ways fans reacted to the drastic idea from The Athletic:
One was of the opinion that you may bring whatever rules or regulations into play, Bayern will not be deterred as nothing will change. The result will still be in Bayern’s favour despite starting the game with a 1-0 deficit.
probably wouldnt even change anything lmao
— luca (@LoerkasWasTaken) August 17, 2022
Another user brought forward Bayern’s position in the previous season if the 1-0 deficit rule would have been active.
Does someone know if they would have won last season if they started every game one goal behind?
— Zacharias (@MalmqvistZ) August 18, 2022
To everyone’s surprise, if the rule was active in the last season, the Bavarians would have ended at the fifth spot with 56 points and their dominance would have come to a halt.
A pertinent question was raised by a fan who was inquisitive about the credits of the goal. He was confused about who will be credited with the goal at the beginning of the game against Bayern. But a Dortmund fan was standing watch and mentioned that Dortmund’s strikers will have a better chance to top the goal-scoring charts now.
There were also voices defending Bayern and calling out the lethargy of the other clubs to up their game and contest with the best German team in the land.
Rather blame bayern who's have desired and ambition to dominate world football . they should blame 17 team who lack of ambition and inconsistent . Also DFL too for bad broadcasting and marketing strategies
— Trent (@TrentFCx) August 17, 2022
Whenever big teams dominate, we always question financial fair play. Hence, a fan suggested a cost cap like Formula 1 to stop the sheer domination of Bayern.
For me the best way make bundesliga good again is a cost cap like f1 where it stops big teams dominating and adds closeness to the game
— ViciousVerstappen #MCFC #Redbull (@VerstappenMCFC) August 17, 2022
However, one comment reminded us that the biggest setback will occur to Bayern’s number one, Manuel Neuer, who will be denied a clean sheet throughout the season. And given his aggressive abilities, it looks like Neuer will be the first one to block this one-goal deficit rule from coming into the picture.
Neuer with zero clean sheet
— Peter Drury's son 💙 (@dejithrive) August 18, 2022
The new season is already on its way. Bayern has started strong yet again. Although there might be no rule coming along to hamper their progress, the other clubs can only wish that Bayern’s ruthlessness diminishes, if not completely goes away.
