Beautiful Bayern

The last Wednesday in May will never be the same. What always used to be an annual highlight, the European Cup, now Champions League Final, has been brought forward to the weekend before — on the say-so of ever-tinkering Uefa chief Michel Platini so that more children, who won’t have to go to school the next day, can watch it. Whoever said sports bureaucrats didn’t have a heart? So at the end of next week (22 May) we can feast on a match of stupendous European pedigree, Louis van Gaal’s Bayern Munich against Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan in Madrid. And though the head says pragmatic, brilliantly drilled, defensive Inter should win (certainly my head, as I invested in them at an appetising 7-2 just before the semi-finals), here is why your heart should rule and you should be backing the beery Bavarians of Bayern.

1) Talking of beer, the club gave out free ale to fans last autumn after a particularly dismal start to the season, six points off the top of the Bundesliga and with an embarrassing defeat to Bordeaux in the early rounds of the Champions League. Now of course they have wrapped up their 22nd German title.

2) They look after their own: the club is run by great former players, Uli Hoeness is president, Franz Beckenbauer is honorary chairman, and the great Karl-Heinz Rummenigge is chief executive. And these are all people who do real jobs: I know Bobby Charlton is attached to Manchester United, but I’m not quite sure what he does. And when the great striker Gerd Muller, ‘Der Bomber’, fell to bits after retiring from football and ended up a penniless alcoholic on the streets in Florida, Bayern were quickly on hand to rescue him, put him through rehab, and give him a coaching job.