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La Liga has El Clásico, France has Le Classique, and Argentina goes full gun with its Superclásico. English football has no true equivalent, with Liverpool and Manchester United fans unable to agree on a name for their grand-slam meetings. Up in the land of fitba, there’s this weekend’s 450th Old Firm/Glasgow derby (delete as applicable according to your stringency on Scottish company law). And Germany has Der Klassiker, between Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund. The Bundesliga marketing suits have been out in force this week for the one game, played on Saturday evening, that brings extra eyeballs. Though questions are often raised over whether this is a true, classic rivalry; Dortmund have not won a league title since Jürgen Klopp was making his rounds in 2012.
Since then, Bayern have celebrated a league title with lashings of weissbier outside the Rathaus every year save for 2024, when Xabi Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen went unbeaten to wear the crown. Dortmund v Bayern, is it a historic rivalry? Well, not really, since Bayern’s dominance of the Bundesliga goes back to 1968-69, when they succeeded Eintracht Braunschweig and Nürnberg as champions. The 1970s took in Borussia Mönchengladbach as their chief rivals, what with Günter Netzer, Allan Simonsen and all that.
