Bayern, Dortmund ready to restore Germany efficiency
An all-German Champions League final is long overdue and Wembley cauldron offers Bayern Munich a perfect chance of redemption
In football, is Germany a nation of chokers? The big surprise about today's Champions League final is not the teams - Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund are both superb. It is that such an all-German contest to become Europe's top club has taken so long to materialise.
With the largest economy and population in Europe, modern stadiums heaving with fans, financial backing from industrial giants, an impressively run league with a fat balance sheet and mostly profitable clubs, and a web of academies hot-housing young players, German teams should be all-conquering, regularly scooping up trophies.
You can't say Wow...in the last few years we have done more right than wrong
But German football's motto, especially in the decade since Bayern were the last German champions of Europe in 2001, could be "close, but no cigar". A poster-boy for German underachievement is Philipp Lahm, captain of Bayern and the national team. His trophy haul from two World Cups and three European Championships with Germany, plus two Champions League finals (2010 and 2012) with Bayern, is precisely zero.
Asked by a cheeky British journalist if he knows the term "chokers", Lahm professed or pretended that he didn't. But that unkind tag will be stickier than glue if Bayern lose their third Champions League final in four years at London's Wembley Stadium.
If Lahm, one of the world's best full-backs, had been Spanish, it would have been a different story. At 29, the same age as Lahm, Andres Iniesta has a World Cup and two European Championships with Spain and three Champions League winner's medals with Barcelona.