The growth of the Bayern-Dortmund rivalry has made Klassiker must-see TV

The difficulty in quantifying Borussia Dortmund versus Bayern Munich for a worldwide audience is that it is a game full of contradictions.

On the one hand, it puts the two best-supported clubs in Germany on a collision course, and 26 of the last 31 Meisterschale lifting is done by either Schwarz-Yellow from the gritty western Ruhrpott or, more often, the sophisticated Bavarian Record champion.

But it is not at all like in Spain, for example, where the country’s two leading teams take up 99% of the football media’s oxygen. In Germany, every community in every major urban area is represented to the tune of big, bouncy crowds and dizzyingly large memberships. In Stuttgart, Frankfurt and places like Gelsenkirchen – home to second-tier Schalke 04 just 20 miles along the Autobahn – the main focus this weekend will still be on local considerations rather than stopping everything at 18:30 to witness a joint nationwide experience.

However, it is understandable that German football decision-makers wanted to raise this clash more than a decade ago, and thus has come the increase in There Classics as the accepted shorthand. Many fans I encounter on trains, in pubs and outside grounds scoff at this “marketing” nomenclature, while around the world, certainly among more casual Bundesliga fans, it gives access to something immediately understandable and relatable.

It is also notable that more and more Bayern and Dortmund players are using Classic term, which may simply be a reflection of the media landscape and influences in which they grew up.

When I first arrived here as a young student in the 1980s, there was no thought that the tournament represented anything close to the definitive German football event. If anything, the Classic of the 1970s had been Borussia Mönchengladbach-Bayern, and it was to be replaced early in the following decade by North-South Summit (north-south summit) meeting between Hamburg SV and Bayern, the two dominant teams of that era from two of the biggest cities in Federal Republic.

On their side, Dortmund always had the ruckus District derby clashes with Schalke, Germany’s most prominent derby. Bayern had southern business to attend to amid regional tension in the games against VfB Stuttgart (Südgipfel) and FC Nürnberg. So when did we arrive Zeitenwende (turning point)?

The BVB-Bayern tension began to take hold in 1995 and 1996 with back-to-back title wins for Dortmund, who then in 1997 under coach Ottmar Hitzfeld had the maturity to lift the UEFA Champions League trophy at Bayern’s old home, the Olympiastadion.

Hitzfeld flew the nest to Munich and the intensity became more robust. In a storming 1-1 draw at Dortmund in 2001, a total of 10 players were booked and three sent off, which remains the record for any Bundesliga game. History has recorded that when BVB endured financial problems in 2004, a €2 million loan from Bayern helped them stave off the dismal harvest.

In my opinion, it was the Jürgen Klopp period that really fueled things. Let’s not forget that, on the way to win Meisterschale in 2011 and 2012, Dortmund made a clean sweep – winning four times in a row – against the Bavarians.

The match that I will always think of to conjure up memories of the excitement of that spell was on the 30th matchday of the 2011-12 season. It had the whole feeling of the two best teams in Europe on a collision course and Robert Lewandowski put BVB in front with 13 minutes left. Suddenly, Arjen Robben was brought down in the box by Roman Weidenfeller, and referee Knut Kircher pointed to the spot.

Weidenfeller parried away Robben’s feeble effort and it was a matter of considerable debate, fueled by the late great Franz Beckenbauer on TV, that the Dutchman had even taken it in the first place. Apparently the old rule was that whoever was fouled should not take the spot kick. We all learned that as viewers. A year later, Bayern and Dortmund could rightly consider themselves the two best clubs in Europe when they met at what the Germans often call the home of football, Wembley.

Bayern’s Champions League final success that year was the prelude to a decade plus of complete dominance on the domestic front. It meant little that during the years they won 11 consecutive league titles, Dortmund were their closest pursuers on eight occasions. The gap was visible and several hammers were handed out.

Still, I always feel that every Dortmund-Bayern duel is one Snap shota snapshot of that moment for both teams. In March, BVB rewrote the trend in recent history by recording their first league win in Munich in almost a decade, as if to compound the pain for a Bayern side about to lose its crown to Bayer Leverkusen.

People who don’t follow the Bundesliga closely tend to think that Bayern will inevitably always win. However, this will be a test of how good Vincent Kompany’s squad really is. After the free flowing Hooray Fußball of the first few weeks of this term, they have become stubbornly pragmatic, as evidenced by seven consecutive games in all competitions without conceding.

But Dortmund under Nuri Şahin, although wildly inconsistent, have had the magic formula in front of 81,000 at Strobelallee this season, where they have won all six home games in the Bundesliga and two more in the Champions League. That winning run actually stretches to 11 if you take it back to last season, when they finished second in the Champions League while only finishing fifth in the Bundesliga.

So what will Snap shot consist of this time? Anyone who tells you they already know is probably guessing.