The Open-Ended Nature of Sport Despite FC Bayern: Analysis and Insights

Sport remains open-ended, despite FC Bayern. Its old guard performs incredibly unsupervised around the championship celebrations.

The string pullers from FC Bayern: President Herbert Hainer and Uli Hoeneß Photo: Sven Hoppe / dpa

In terms of the result, none of this is exciting: the Bayern men are soccer and Canada are ice hockey world champions, Hamburger SV has to go into relegation, and the Bayern women are also soccer champions. Each of these messages existed before and will exist again.

That sport is exciting, however, could be seen this weekend: The German ice hockey selection made it to the final at the World Cup and only lost there to ice hockey power Canada. Sport is open-ended. When the fans of SV Wehen Wiesbaden thought they were sure to be promoted to the second division and stormed the pitch, they noticed that competitor VfL Osnabrück won their game in the 94th and 96th minute – and was promoted straight away.

Or when HSV was already in the 1st Bundesliga, competitor FC Heidenheim secured victory and promotion in the 93rd and 99th minutes. Or when Dortmund fans started celebrating from the 81st minute because Bayern had just conceded the equalizer in Cologne – but had to stop celebrating from the 89th minute because Bayern were ahead again.

The ball is round, and that means sport is the liberal-capitalist promise tucked into shorts that anything is possible. But monopolies and oligopolies emerge. In the women’s Bundesliga, for example, VfL Wolfsburg and Bayern Munich share all the successes. Bayern won the men’s title for the eleventh time in a row.

But why is the football monopolist Bavaria acting so unbelievably unsupervised and throwing out the CEO and sports director in triumph? Just a title, that’s the message of this unprecedented campaign, is far from enough for us. Mia san Germany. But maybe monopoly also makes you stupid: the old Bayern bosses believed the championship was over and fired Kahn and Salihamidžić. Now this old guard stands there in disgrace, but it is precisely they who are heaving themselves back into power. Sports can also be ugly.

this old guard is disgraced