For those of us in the soccer world, whether fans or pundits, the debate over which league boasts the best teams in Europe has been one that has raged on for years, if not generations. It's an argument whose foundations shift every few years, with the likes of Serie A and the Premier League having respectively had the grand occasions of an all-Italian and all-English Champions League final to cite as proof of their place at the top of the European pedestal in the last decade. In very recent times, the near consensus has been that La Liga, thanks to Barcelona and Real Madrid featuring once in a generation talents as Messi and Ronaldo, was at the very pinnacle of not only the European game, but the global game as well.
Yet, as qualitative and almost steeped in mysticism as our opinions on this topic may be, the results tend to speak for themselves and tell us everything we need to know. With that very blunt fact in mind, there can be only one conclusion in 2013: the power has firmly, if not resoundingly, swung to the Bundesliga.
Indeed, a funny thing happened during all of the pomp and pageantry of the 360 minutes that lay before us: the heavily anticipated games, save for the final few minutes of the second leg between Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund, were exercises in dominance and control for Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, despite the fact that their competition have arguably been the crème de la crème of Europe of late. Despite this, the German sides just didn't care about exactly who was lining up on the other side of the field; they opted to go about things as they have done for a couple of years now, as Barcelona especially found out upon losing 7-0 on aggregate.
Given the fact that the Premier League and the Spanish giants tend to capture the attention of fans around the world and especially here in the US, it is somewhat sad that far too many have hardly taken notice of Borussia Dortmund's consecutive Bundesliga titles and Bayern Munich's blindingly dominant domestic performances this season. Furthermore, it is especially criminal that names such as Lewandowski, Reus, and Mandžukić aren't as familiar to some as those of Gomez, Robben and Schweinsteiger, but oh, indeed they will be in three weeks' time. The time has come for everyone to sit up and take notice of the very best the Bundesliga has to offer, and now fans around the world have little choice but to do just that.
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