Guardiola eyes a fable with Götze
Borussia Dortmund star Mario Götze is set to join rivals Bayern Munich at the end of the season.
Bayern Munich have staked their claim on the ‘world’s best’ tag with the 4-0 destruction of Barcelona in the Champions League semifinal first leg. Whether they confirm the anointment by winning the coveted title this season or not, only time will tell.
The Bavarians have already regained the German title from Borussia Dortmund while shattering the record for the fewest matches required in doing so. Lest a catastrophe, Bayern are expected to bulldoze VfB Stuttgart in the German Cup final, leaving manager Jupp Heynckes a chance to leave the club as a treble winner. If that does happen, incoming boss Pep Guardiola will have an interesting challenge. How to improve a team that already seems perfect?
Guardiola, thanks to his Johan Cruyff-inspired tiki-taka revolution at Barca, has gained an aura that few managers in world football can boast of. So to just inherit a legacy from Heynckes is something that will be incongruent to his status, unless he starts a new revolution. And there in lies the reason for the reported 37 million euros Bayern threw at Dortmund to acquire the services of Mario Götze.
When football world was shaken by the news of the deal a day before the Dortmund-Real clash, Borussia manager Jürgen Klopp, grudgingly, shed some light into the move. “He (Götze) is the player Pep Guardiola really wanted. He didn’t want to pass up on the chance to work together with this extraordinary coach,” Klopp was quoted as saying by the agencies. That Guardiola has started pulling strings even before he formally joins Bayern is in itself intriguing. But more interesting is his target — a player Franz Beckenbeaur once compared with Lionel Messi.
Götze has long been termed a precious gem in German football. Right from his first-team debut in 2009 at the age of 17, the Dortmund academy product has impressed with his skill, pace, vision and immaculate ball-control. He played a crucial role in both of Dortmund’s championship-winning seasons. To a large extent it is the availability of players like Götze, Marco Reus and Mesut Ozil that has forced the German national team to shift from their rigid style of play to a more eye-pleasing one.
However, despite all the laurels, Götze still remains an ‘upcoming talent’. Many before him had enjoyed the tag of the ‘next big thing’, only to fade away to obscurity. But, thankfully for Götze, come next season, he will be under Guardiola’s wings. And thankfully for Guardiola, he will not have to better Heynckes’ potential treble-winning achievement. Because history will tell Guardiola will not be judged just by the number of titles he has won. He is revered for tiki-taka and the development of youngsters at Barca — with Messi being the jewel and the crown as well. In Götze, Guardiola, perhaps, sees another fairytale — written in German of course.
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