The season of the Bundesliga has ended. Bayern Munich are once more champions. But somehow, there is the most significant game between the two largest clubs of Germany yet to be played.
And more like a curtain-raiser than a curtain-raiser has any right to be, the Franz Beckenbauer Supercup on August 22, Borussia Dortmund vs. Bayern, at Signal Iduna Park comes. As there was no title race alone between the two sides that had happened this season in 2025/26. It was an utterance of the position German football takes, who the puppets are, and whether anything will ever really ever change.
The Season That Told The Whole Story
Vincent Kompany had something to prove when he went to Bayern. The young, untested on the highest level, are being left to inherit a club which had been playing the Bundesliga like a game. And what came out of him was far otherwise. Bayern had not been beaten in their first ten competitive matches; they had been playing the attacking football of real quality, and they were taking the title with the points gap, which rendered the table distorted.
Borussia Dortmund, to their credit, were not humiliating. The team by Niko Kovač has managed to finish second, went deep into Europe, and demonstrated some signs of the unity which was lacking for years. But second felt, never, the floor, but the ceiling. That top gap of 11 points at that time, after that February Klassiker had a story of all its own regarding the chasm between intention and action.
What February Revealed
The second Klassiker of the season, hosted at Signal Iduna Park on February 28, was precisely the game that could be defined as such, which started a rivalry and not just a continuation of it. Dortmund was led through by Nico Schlotterbeck. Harry Kane scored a goal to equalise, and then scored a penalty to give the visitors the upper hand. Then Daniel Svensson made it even in the 83rd, and the Yellow Wall hoped. Joshua Kimmich had then volleyed the 87th, and it was all over.
Bayern won 3-2. They increased to 11-point leads. In practice, the title race was over that afternoon in Westphalia.
It was not only the score line that was noteworthy. It was the manner. Bayern took the sucker punch, maintained their cool, and they had a winner when lesser teams would have been content to earn a draw. It is not quality, that is mentality. And Dortmund, with all their promise in summer, proved again to be not yet capable of meeting it.
The Man That Cannot Be Stopped
You can never predict this kind of thing without starting and finishing with Harry Kane. This is because the England captain has become so prolific in Munich that there is no longer a provocative aspect to the comparisons with Robert Lewandowski, but rather, an inevitable one. With 23 matchdays left to play the 2025/26 season of the Bundesliga, Kane had scored 28 goals and did not seem to be decreasing. He has scored twice in the February Klassiker, being the one who appears to score in each and every game that counts.
In a way that is rather notable considering the amount of time they have had to ponder over it, Dortmund have not been able to come up with a convincing response to him. Another opportunity to work it out will be provided with the Supercup. As history is telling us, they will not.
The Hunger Dortmund Needs to Find
Borussia Dortmund, as the runners-up, host the champions in the Supercup, a role that is accompanied by a certain type of motivation. They come too, with a mere loss to Atalanta on the aggregate at the hands of the Champions League – a loss that hung around and left a team that is in dire need of a morale-boosting win.
Yellow and black have grounds to be optimistically taken. That defeat at the Allianz Arena in October meant that Dortmund were 16 league matches unbeaten. Fabio Silva has had a great first season. The team is well-endowed. Signal Iduna Park at full capacity is among the most imposing atmospheres in European football, and 81,000 fans with a response to give will not be short of motivation towards Dortmund.
Motivation and execution are, however, different. Bayern have demonstrated that on many occasions.
What August Changes
Bundesliga is not the Supercup. No title points to be made. No implications of the season – not yet. But the winning of it for Dortmund would be so much. It would be the most obvious to say that the distance made by Kompany Bayern last year is temporary, that the pecking order has not yet been established, and that Der Klassiker is still a good thriller.
To Bayern, it is a chance to pick up where they had left off. To indicate that the title was not high – it was a level.
It is a story that has existed in different forms in these two cities and their clubs that represent them, over the past sixty years. The scorelines change. The names change. The underlying question – can anyone ever actually catch Bayern Munich, and are Dortmund up to the challenge of being the ones to do so never really gets answered.
August 22. Signal Iduna Park. The answer starts afresh.
Leave a Reply