Borussia Dortmund CEO Aki Watzke on Tuesday warned that Bayern Munich’s dominance of the Bundesliga is damaging the health of the German first division. Bayern won the leaguelast season by a record 25-point margin and is currently 19 points ahead of second-place Bayer Leverkusen with 12 games to play. The Bavarian giant has won 20 of 22 games so far this season, drawingjust two, while scoring 61 goals and conceding just nine.
Dortmund, which finished second to Bayern in both the Bundesliga and UEFA Champions League last season, is currently third. In aninterview, Watzke claims that Bayern, which has secured the signature of key BVB players Mario Gotze and Robert Lewandowski in recent seasons, is “out todestroy Dortmund … by taking our players so that we are no longer a threat to them.”
He also warned that the club’s dominance of the league threatens to undermine theBundesliga’s standing in the world. “Over the past 30, 40 years, no German club has been able to build a platform like Bayern Munich has done. It’s a different story in Spain,England and Italy. You’ll find this monopoly only in Germany. The current state of Bundesliga is not good. For the development of German soccer, it is imperative that there is another clubchallenging alongside FC Bayern.”