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Marina Hegering (right) and Jovana Damnjanovic from FC Bayern cheer about winning the title: "The emotions are riding a little roller coaster right now."
Photo:
Sven Beyrich / SPP / imago images / Sports Press Photo
Jens Scheuer hugged them all and got wet in the end.
The 42-year-old FC Bayern coach walked from player to player, there were lots of hugs and of course a beer shower, as it should be in Munich.
With the 4-0 victory over Eintracht Frankfurt, FC Bayern secured their first championship title since 2016 on Sunday, the fourth overall in the 50-year history of the club's women's division.
With 61 points, the team could not be overtaken, and the Wolfsburg 8-0 win on the last day of the game didn't help.
"I'm really overwhelmed," said Scheuer.
"Feelings are riding a bit of a rollercoaster right now." The joy must have been so strong because the Munich women had become a little nervous again.
After the double semi-finals in the DFB-Pokal (against Wolfsburg) and Champions League (against FC Chelsea), they could have lost the Bundesliga at the end of a strong season.
In theory, but the last gig once again made it clear how good they were this year.
The Munich women have dominated the league;
82 goals scored, only nine goals allowed.
Between September and April they won 25 competitive games in a row.
The championship was deserved.
But it should only be the beginning - the beginning of a greater success story, a new era.
"We don't just want to become German champions once, we want to be successful in the long term, also internationally," Bianca Rech told SPIEGEL.
Rech has been the sports director of FC Bayern since 2019.
The former national player was a defender in Munich between 2006 and 2010.
She has seen times when the team was far from the top.
And that's why she says: "We don't measure the success of the season solely by winning the German championship." It's more of a holistic approach.
In 2000, the team rose again to the Bundesliga after eight years in the second division.
But it hasn't had a home for a long time.
The game was played in several venues - in Schäftlarn, the Dante stadium, on Grünwälder Straße and in Aschheim.
Weight training took place in the Olympic base at the Olympic Park, lunch was eaten on Säbenerstrasse.
And for physio and doctor appointments, it went to another place.
A leap forward - also thanks to a better infrastructure
"Back then, the players had to drive across town several times, with a traffic jam a stretch could take 45 minutes, sometimes you sat in the car for two hours all day," says Rech. It wasn't a professional infrastructure. Nevertheless, FC Bayern won the championship in 2015 and 2016. After that, the club was left behind by VfL Wolfsburg, which has won the title four times in a row since 2018.
In the summer of 2017, the Munich residents moved to the FC Bayern campus.
"That was the big, decisive step for us in the past few years," says Rech. Since then, the players no longer have to commute to pursue their profession.
"You come here in the morning and stay the whole day, all appointments from the video analysis to the physio appointment take place here." Only the players of VfL Wolfsburg have comparable conditions in the women's Bundesliga.
This good infrastructure makes Munich attractive - for exciting talents, but also for star players.
The team already has young players like the top goal scorer Lea Schüller, 23, who has scored 16 goals this season, or Klara Bühl, 20, and Sydney Lohmann, 20, who are considered highly talented.
But there are also some with experience: Captain Lina Magull, Marina Hegering, Sarah Zadrazil.
The Japanese national player Saki Kumagai is moving to Munich for the coming season.
She has already won the Champions League five times and the World Cup title in 2011.
The 30-year-old midfielder is a top star.
"Today we're sitting at the table with players we wouldn't have had access to two years ago," says Rech. At FC Bayern, a mixture of talented and top international players is emerging.
Saki Kumagai: Once active for Frankfurt, then under contract for a long time in Lyon, from summer in Munich
Photo:
Stephane Mahe / REUTERS
The championship title should therefore only be an intermediate step.
Together with coach Scheuer, Rech is pursuing a four-year plan: In the end, they want to dominate the league permanently - and also land at the top in the Champions League.
In the season of the premier class that has just ended, the Munich women made it to the semi-finals - and narrowly failed at Chelsea.
Bayern had won the first leg 2-1, in the second leg the decision was only made in the final phase.
"You saw against Chelsea that the young players in particular need several games like this in order to mature," says Rech.
Teams like Chelsea with world-class players Pernille Hader and Samantha Kerr are at least one step further.
But Bayern give the impression that they are catching up.
The foundations for success have at least been laid.
