Bundesliga review of 2023: Kane’s arrival, Heidenheim, and Tuchel’s cutting remarks – The Athletic
For German football, 2023 was a year riddled with angst.
It was a curious, contradictory 12 months, full of existential dread about creeping commercialism, worries over competitive balance and a palpable indifference to the national team and towards a home European Championship, which is now just six months away.
But beyond the smoke, fire, the choreographed protest and the disruptive tennis balls, a potential new champion rose and fell agonisingly short on the pitch, before another emerged to threaten the end of Bayern Munich’s generational dominance.
This is the year that was in the Bundesliga.
The high point
Union Berlin qualifying for the Champions League was remarkable, but was not quite the underdog story of the year.
That belonged to Heidenheim.
On the final day of the 2.Bundesliga season, they needed to match Hamburg’s result to win promotion. In the 90th minute, with Hamburg having sealed a 1-0 win, Heidenheim were 2-1 down in Regensburg, needing to score twice in stoppage time.
Remarkably, they did. After 99 minutes and a ridiculous sequence of events — including a penalty and, over in Sandhausen, a pitch invasion by Hamburg fans who believed they had been promoted — Tim Kleindienst found himself alone at the back post with the net yawning.
BUNDESLIGA! BUNDESLIGA! BUNDESLIGA! BUNDESLIGA! BUNDESLIGA! BUNDESLIGA! BUNDESLIGA! BUNDESLIGA! BUNDESLIGA! 🏆🏆🏆
🔴🔵 #NurDerFCH #SSVFCH pic.twitter.com/haihQw2AJX
— 1. FC Heidenheim 1846 (@FCH1846) May 28, 2023
Heidenheim are coached by Frank Schmidt, 49, who, in September 2023, became the longest-serving manager in German football history. When he first took charge of the club in 2007, they were a semi-professional club playing in the fifth tier of German football at a ground with a single 800-seat grandstand.
Schmidt loves to talk about everything other than himself. His wife, his daughters, his cats, his dog and his horse. He spoke, too, about what it meant to lead his club up the mountain, and how it felt to complete that climb alongside so many members of staff who had been with him since the beginning.
Heidenheim’s players celebrate promotion (Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)
The low point
Socially, the Deutsche Fussball Liga’s (DFL) investment proposal was deeply controversial.
The DFL operates the Bundesliga and the motion to sell a portion (12.5 per cent) of its future broadcasting rights to outside investors was initially defeated in May 2023. By December, a scaled-back (eight per cent) proposal was approved by the necessary majority of member clubs.
In the months between, rarely did a matchday pass without protest. Those supporting the initiative claim it to be imperative for the game’s future — a necessary response to European football’s inequities. But many supporters have a deep fear of commercialism and worry that allowing investors greater influence will come at the cost of fan agency, and the erosion of matchday tenets such as affordable ticket prices and atmosphere.
Something had to be done, but nobody wants anything to change; this is a footballing civil war in Germany.
But if the investor deal was the incendiary issue, then Borussia Dortmund’s collapse (when, needing a win to be champions, they could only draw 2-2 with Mainz on the final day of the season) was really the low point — not really for sporting reasons or just because it handed Bayern Munich an 11th-straight title, but because it brought with it an undeserved facetious commentary.
Bayern Munich dominate, yes. They have a pronounced financial advantage and many of the league’s finest players. Those observations are fair, but the Bundesliga’s selling point is — perhaps ironically — in its variety. It lies in the regional differences, the history found around the league, the agency that supporters continue to enjoy and in how it feels to be inside a stadium, in the middle of the lit flares and the concussive noise.
Unfortunately, Dortmund’s stage fright and Bayern’s unbroken dominance led to many of those virtues, yet again, being buried under a fresh layer of disparaging snark.
Most surprising moment
Harry Kane’s transfer.
His relationship with Tottenham Hotspur had deteriorated and he had become determined to play for a more high-powered club. But even when Bayern’s interest was formalised, there was scepticism as to whether Kane would agree to a move, even if Daniel Levy accepted a bid.
That was not specific to Kane, either, because the Bundesliga talent trend is very much in the opposite direction. Even at Bayern’s level, it is rare to see non-German superstars coming over at the absolute peak of their careers. Ignoring the debate over Sadio Mane’s status in the game in 2022, the most recent before that might be Arturo Vidal (2015), or Thiago (2014). Both were excellent players, but neither quite occupied the same level as Kane does today.
So, until Kane stepped out of that — very, very bright red — Audi at Sabener Strasse, few believed that the story was more than an elaborate pantomime.
His reception has been a surprise, too. Football loves money. And football fans love expensive signings. Even so, Bayern supporters have taken to Kane, his goals and his efforts to embrace aspects of the Bavarian culture. The result is universal admiration across an often cynical media for what he has already achieved.
Best goal
Some notable others first, because 2023 was particularly fertile.
Janik Haberer’s volley for Union Berlin against RB Leipzig was beautiful and pure. Alejandro Grimaldo’s knuckleball free kick in the Allianz Arena was perfectly struck and incredibly important to Bayer Leverkusen’s self-esteem. In the second tier, Connor Metcalfe threatened the outer reaches of the Puskas Award with a rising drive against Holstein Kiel.
The Germans have an expression: ‘traumtor’. It means dream goal, but it’s intended more in the once-in-a-lifetime sense.
Kane, Florian Wirtz (Leverkusen), Benjamin Sesko (RB Leipzig) and Brajan Gruda (Mainz) have all scored them, too.
But — and nobody expected a positive mention for Hertha Berlin in this article — Marton Dardai’s rasping long-ranger against Borussia Monchengladbach was as violent a strike as you could ever hope to see. Hertha would be relegated anyway but, at the time, it set them on course for a vital win and teased the prospect of survival.
And he scored it on his 21st birthday…
The stat that sums up 2023
It would be churlish to ignore Kane’s 21 goals from 15 games, but the one that best characterises the league is the attendance average: 42,992 fans per game, the highest among the top five leagues in Europe.
It reflects the importance of making football affordable. The reward for doing so is stadiums full of life, character, and personality that are not just dictated by the score.
The Bundesliga’s average attendance is the highest among Europe’s top five leagues (Christof Koepsel/Getty Images)
Most memorable quote
In the weeks before Bayern Munich’s game against Borussia Dortmund in November, Thomas Tuchel faced a chorus of criticism. Dietmar Hamman had his say, but the loudest voice was Lothar Matthaus, the ‘rekordnationalspieler‘ (most capped German international) turned foghorn media personality. Matthaus insisted that Bayern had shown no tactical evolution under Tuchel’s rein.
Bayern had been eliminated from the DFB-Pokal by third-division Saarbrucken and that did little to quieten the noise. Bayern dominate the news cycle even when they are playing well. When they are playing badly, they are the only story.
But Tuchel’s players responded to that pressure with their best performance of the season, dismantling Dortmund 4-0, and putting a strut in Tuchel’s step before his post-match media duties. That included an interview with Matthaus, who was working alongside pundit Julia Simic and moderator Sebastian Hellman for Sky Deutschland. It was clear Tuchel had heard every word of the criticism.
“Analyse the game for us, Thomas?”
“Lothar can do it, and if not, Didi (Hamann) can,” he said, referencing their criticism in pre-game punditry. He batted a few further questions away and then, the coup de grace, as he removed his earpiece, put down his microphone, and started walking away.
“We won 4-0, now you have to do a 180-degree turn, have fun.”
Interview over, to the sound of a toe-curling silence.
The piece I most enjoyed writing
Covering Hamburg vs St Pauli for The Athletic’s Derby Days series.
Writing about derbies always makes me nervous. Trying to capture the way people feel about something so personal is a daunting challenge, particularly because the aim is to be neutral about an issue of great sensitivity.
Hamburg is my home, meaning that the determination to be right — to treat both clubs fairly and do supporters justice — felt overwhelming. This is not a typical game and the tension between the clubs is tricky to characterise. It is about football, yes, but that game crackles more with class resentment and it takes more than a quick google to understand that.
Nobody demanded that I be immediately exiled from the city and sent back to England after writing it, so, in those terms, it was a success.
A wish for 2024 is
That Euro 2024 is a success. That people enjoy themselves at what, most likely, will be the last tournament staged in a single country.
My wife — German-born — has told me stories of what the 2006 World Cup was like and how it awakened a national pride that, until then, had rarely been seen in the last few decades. By all accounts, that tournament allowed people to see Germany’s best face too, and to be spoiled by rich footballing facilities that have only developed further in the 18 years since.
If Julian Nagelsmann can bolt together a functioning team for the occasion, that would help, too.
(Top photo: Christian Kaspar-Bartke/Getty Images)
