Biggest in Germany, most successful in Europe, best in the world: all-time champions FC Bayern are only too happy to use superlatives. But his title series is not that unique.
The reflexes still work for Oliver Kahn, the former goalkeeper and current CEO of FC Bayern Munich. The 52-year-old recently fended off any criticism of the football professionals in the Champions League by immediately diverting attention to another topic – the upcoming tenth German championship in a row: “No team in Europe has managed that yet!”
You can say that, even if it’s not true. But that’s how you think at FC Bayern: the biggest in Germany, the most successful in Europe, the best worldwide. Always and everywhere the number one, at least felt.
If you counted correctly, eleven football clubs in Europe before FC Bayern have managed to win ten or more national championships in a row. Skonto Riga (from 1991 to 2004) and Lincoln Red Imps FC from Gibraltar (from 2003 to 2016) are enthroned at the top with 14 titles each. Of course, such small clubs without a glamor factor are just as easily neglected in Munich as the 13-time series champions Rosenborg Trondheim (Norway/1992 to 2004) and Bate Borissow (Belarus/2006 to 2018) or Dinamo Zagreb (eleven titles from 2006 to 2016).
The club is relegation record champions
Not even in Germany are the Munich footballers the first to have ten championships in a row: Berlin’s FC Dynamo demonstrated this in the GDR Oberliga from 1979 to 1988. The FC Bayern kickers don’t need to be compared to other sports either: the volleyball team at VC Hannover won 16 titles between 1958 and 1973, and the volleyball team at SC Leipzig won 15 between 1962 and 1976.
The ice hockey club SG Dynamo Weißwasser was just as successful between 1951 and 1965, i.e. before the GDR Oberliga was reduced to two teams. Even in chess and basketball there have long been examples of ten-year reigning champions: the Oos Chess Society Baden-Baden (2006 to 2015) and the women of the company sports association Academy of Sciences, BSG AdW Berlin for short (1978 to 1987).
So there is no reason to excessively exaggerate the performance of the FC Bayern footballers. On the other hand, it is not to be underestimated either. You first have to manage to become champion ten times in a row: The former record champions 1. FC Nürnberg have only collected nine titles in total. Currently, the club can only boast that no one has been relegated from the Bundesliga more often than he has, namely eight times. FC Bayern should copy THAT first.