The most prominent banner inside the Allianz Arena felt like a measure of the new Bayern Munich. “Schone heile Welt” it read. Translated, it means a beautiful, perfect kingdom.
It’s not the thing you would normally expect of a football crowd and yet somehow it felt so appropriate.
Everything feels right about Bayern at the moment, and the sense that something truly special is coming together.
What happened to Barcelona on Tuesday, and the scrutiny that has followed, was encapsulated by the front cover of AS , the Spanish sports daily.
“Fin de Ciclo,” was the headline.
Yet this did not feel like the end of an era. It felt like the beginning of a new one. Bayern had inflicted the ordeal without Toni Kroos. Next season they will have Mario Gotze from Borussia Dortmund, cherry-picking again from their Bundesliga rivals.
This is into a midfield that already boasts the power, artistry and football intelligence of Thomas Muller, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Javi Martinez, Franck Ribery and Arjen Robben.
It is a daunting prospect, not just for the clubs who regularly compete in the Champions League but those who have become a speck in the distance in the Bundesliga. It is another jolting reminder for the Premier League, from Manchester United down, of the gap that has opened up at the top, and what a challenge it is going to be to close it.
Bayern, to recap, have a 20-point lead in Bundesliga, a plus-75 goal difference and were confirmed as the champions of Germany in the first week of April.
At the point when other teams start citing fatigue, they seem to be getting stronger. Jupp Heynckes's side, the first to beat Barcelona 4-0 since Dynamo Kyiv in 1997, have scored 55 goals in their past 10 games.
Deficit
No team since the introduction of the away-goals rule has overcome a first-leg deficit of that score in European competition, in 171 attempts.
If Bayern get one in the Camp Nou, Barcelona will need six. And who would bet against Bayern scoring? It is more than a year since the last occasion they did not manage an away goal.
Heynckes had planned for this moment with almost forensic detail. He talked about the hours he had spent watching footage of Barcelona, not just collectively but individually, man by man.
“You have to analyse a team,” he explained. “What is their playing style? Where do they move? How do they move? Where do they go? How do they play? I did that. I analysed them.”
It was no coincidence Dani Alves did not have the freedom to set off on those overlapping runs from the right of defence. The full back had played more like a winger against Paris Saint-Germain.
Jordi Roura, the Barcelona coach, repeatedly made the point that Bayern had been “very physical”. This can be meant as a complaint, or even a thinly veiled insult, but Roura said it ungrudgingly.
The team at the top of La Liga looked weary in comparison and that, more than anything, is perhaps the area Barcelona must address first.
This is a side that operate with virtually no rotation policy, playing in their 51st game of the season, and from the 65th minute onwards looked shot.
"Bayern were the better team, in everything," Messi said. "They were stronger, they scored from set pieces, every second ball was theirs."
Moulded
Heynckes has moulded a team with strength of personality, playing with structure, drive and creativity, the collective sense they know exactly where they want to be and have the wit and gumption to do it.
Their oldest player on Tuesday was Ribery, two weeks after turning 30. This is a team, as Gary Neville observed “is ready to win”. Neville did not just mean once, he meant serial winning. “Sometimes you just have to congratulate the opposition,” Alves said. “And Bayern are the best team we have played for a long time.”
Guardian Service
