Despite winning the league title amongst other trophies like the FIFA Club World Cup, Bayern Munich have been facing a lot of criticism in the last few days after the exit from the Champions League following a 5-0 aggregate thrashing at the hands of Real Madrid. Bayern came into the competition as the reigning holders and also were widely judged as the best team in the world. However, after managing to win the league title in record time, and the performances have been slowly slipping.
They only managed to beat a struggling Manchester United in the quarter-finals of the competition, while the deficiencies were severely exposed in the second leg against Real Madrid. After a 1-0 defeat in the first leg, Bayern suffered a 4-0 defeat in front of the home fans. This was the heaviest defeats suffered by the club in front of the home fans for more than three decades. Despite such statistics, Borussia Dortmund managerial Jurgen Klopp, whose team recently beat Bayern Munich in the league, says that Guardiola’s team still remain the best in the world.
Dortmund are expected to put in a much better challenge for the league title next time around. Even though they finished second in the table, they were almost 20 points behind Bayern Munich.
“I think that in a cup final, unless the champion plays a team from the second league, there is no favourite. So that’s not important. But Bayern Munich are the favourites in every game I can think of. And that hasn’t changed at all because of some results from the last couple of games. I’ve read things concerning the Real-Bayern match, where they totally forgot about how the two goals happened. They made it hard for Bayern to turn the game again,” said Klopp.
Dortmund and Bayern Munich took part in an all-German Champions League final last season.