Last year, for the first time ever, the UEFA Champions League Final, which showcases the best soccer clubs in the world, was
the most watched sporting event, drawing 109 million viewers worldwide, 3 million more than the Super Bowl.
I'm going to predict that this year won't be a repeat for that title.
With
FC Barcelona's loss today to FC Internazionale Milano (a.k.a. Inter) on a 2-3 aggregate score in the seminfinals, the May 22 final matchup is set, pitting Inter against Bundesliga powerhouse FC Bayern Munich (a.k.a. Bayern). And while both teams are playing incredible football, there's no way this is the matchup that UEFA executives could have been hoping for. While Bayern is by far the dominant club of the Bundesliga, it very much defines itself as a German club, and the appeal outside of the German-speaking is somewhat self-limited. Of their 23 man roster, a full 13 are German, an incredibly high ratio of home grown players for the modern European club, and a big barrier to creating excitement for the team outside the home market. Only two non-Germans are part of the Bayern hall of fame, and until 2008, every Bayern captain has been German (the current captain, Mark van Bommel, is Dutch). Not exactly a recipe for international appeal.
Inter is a different story, as it fits closer to the mold of the modern European team. Its squad is, true to its name, international, with only 5 of 23 players on the roster Italians, and with four Argentinians and four Brazilians making an impressive South American contingent. And the club is definitely no stranger to the international stage, having won the Champions League title twice and the newer UEFA Europa League title three times. But despite its claim to fame of being the only Italian club never to have been relegated out of Serie A, a century long history including 17 Serie A titles and five Copa Italia championships, the fact remains that Inter is overshadowed by the two behemoths of Italian football: "The Old Lady" of Juventus and PM Silvio Berlusconi's AC Milan. Juventus (a.k.a. Juve) is a dynasty, the most successful team in Italian football, with 27 Serie A titles and 9 Copa Italia championships since the club's inception in 1897. AC Milan (a.k.a. Milan), on the other hand, is one of those teams that can buy players, and thus arguably championships, at whim, thanks to its Italian billionaire/playboy/prime minister owner. The results for AC Milan have been telling; at 11 Champions League final appearance with 7 championships resulting, Milan is only second to Real Madrid in reaching the highest pinnacle of European football. With competition like Juve and Milan, Inter will forever struggle for media shares, both abroad and at home (especially since, at home, Berlusconi owns such a large share of the media).
Contrast this to 2009's Champions League final, which pit Manchester United against FC Barcelona. The overtones were epic, to say the least. For those of you unfamiliar to soccer, Man U is the equivalent of the Yankees. They are the richest team, the most willing to sell out, and among the winningest, all of which have helped them transform themselves into the epitome of the modern European football club, which is a global commercial enterprise. Compare that, if you will, to Barcelona. Barca is the only European club who has never sold their jersey space to a sponsor, and actually never had anything other than their club badge on their jersey from 1899 to 2006, when they actually
paid UNICEF, the UN children's aid agency, for the right to wear the humanitarian organization's name on the front of their uniforms. They are, in other words, the exact opposite of Man U, a team dedicated to ideals and beautiful football, bizarrely famous for their beautiful passing game and the ability to dominate possession time. Thus, they have also transformed themselves into a modern European football club, an equally global commercial enterprise, just one that sells based on its often self-congratulatory goodness (As an aside, this is a particularly strange notion, Barca as a global club, given that the organization is self-described and avowedly provincial, dedicated to their native Catalan). I will thus submit that the 2009 UEFA Champions final was only in part a function of the growing worldwide popularity of the tournament, driven in part by the above described internationalization of European soccer clubs. It was, however, mostly driven by the incredible storylines that Man U and Barca presented. Barca's 2-0 victory over Man U in the final, after all, was also part of the incredible season that makes Barca the only team ever to win 6 for 6 titles in a single year (La Liga, Copa del Rey, Supercopa de Espana, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Super Cup, and the 2009 FIFA Club World Cup).
There's simply no way Bayern versus Inter can live up to all that.
