From the New York Times Online: 

MUNICH, Nov. 4 — In Germany’s top soccer league, the empire struck back with a vengeance. The question is whether F.C. Bayern Munich, the country’s most decorated club, can somehow manage to lead the entire league back to greatness.

Bayern is an institution in Germany, its red and white uniforms this nation’s version of the Yankees’ pinstripes. Last season Bayern stumbled unexpectedly, not only not winning the Bundesliga title, but also failing to finish among the top three, which is necessary for a chance to qualify for the European Champions League.

It would be an understatement to say the team did not take it lying down.

Management spent 70 million euros (nearly $102 million) in the off-season to acquire eight high-profile players from inside and outside Germany. Now the pressure is on, a championship expected rather than hoped for. In the process, the team has set a new standard for German professional soccer, but one that less financially successful clubs could have difficulty following.

Despite its position as the continent’s largest economy, the second-most populous country in Europe after Russia and a traditional soccer power, Germany has been relegated to a second-tier attraction in the sport. The Bundesliga is well behind the English Premier League, and also trails the top Spanish and Italian leagues in international interest. That may be because the league, like German society over all, appears to prize solidarity, security and protection for all over runaway success for a few, and has set the rules for television and ownership accordingly.

But with the Italian league trying to recover its footing after a national match-rigging scandal, and Germany still enjoying the glow from playing host to last year’s World Cup — and perhaps more importantly the revenue injection brought with it via new stadiums around the country — it could be ready to make the leap to become a top draw again. For that, the league will need its foremost team in top form.

Bayern has won the German championship 20 times — dating to 1932 — and is the financial juggernaut that most of the country loves to hate. Like the city of Munich, the club is rich and world-renowned but somehow still a little closed and provincial.

Bayern was known in the past for shopping for stars mainly among the local talent of other German teams. Their biggest catches this past summer were the Italian striker and recent world champion Luca Toni; and the French midfield magician Franck Ribéry, whose national team lost to Italy in the World Cup final.

“We’ve brought a whole new philosophy,” said Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, a former star player turned chairman of the team’s executive board.

Gavin Hamilton, editor of World Soccer magazine, said: “Ultimately people are interested in watching star players. That’s the way the Bundesliga will attract support.”

Bayern may have helped to prove that Germany could be a destination for top players despite certain long-held prejudices.

“Clearly we have worse weather than Spain and clearly the cuisine in Italy is better than in Germany, but the best league in the world is in England and they have the worst weather and the worst cuisine,” Rummenigge said.

So far, everything has gone according to plan. Bayern is undefeated in all league and tournament matches this season and at the top of the standings (it has outscored the opposition by 27-4), although with four ties and eight wins, its lead remains slim over Hamburg. The team has also achieved a victory of another kind, upending its reputation for highly effective but often less than aesthetic soccer.

With his small stature and a series of scars running down the right side of his face from a car crash as a child, Ribéry brings a likeable underdog element to the otherwise heavy favorites. He is one of those players who noticeably quiet a stadium when they have the ball, the crowd hyperfocused, trying to catch each tiny stutter of creative footwork or anticipate the improbable angles of his passes in front of the goal. It is a joy not shared by defenders.

Bayern Munich is without a doubt an all-star team, with the luxury of using players from Germany’s highly regarded national team on the bench as substitutes. Normally that would fuel the complaints of detractors. This season feels different. One reason may be the lackluster performance of German teams in international competition.

“It’s a shame that they aren’t in the Champions League,” Rolf Dreyer, an Eintracht Frankfurt fan, said. He was visiting the Bayern headquarters in an upscale residential district of Munich with his wife, a longtime supporter of the Bavarian club.

Their family is divided, with their 10-year-old daughter also supporting Bayern and their 16-year-old son joining Dreyer rooting for Eintracht. Husband and wife had traveled to watch the game the next day. Dreyer joked that, depending on the outcome, “We might have to drive home separately.”

European soccer is more than one league; it is an interlocked series of national and international divisions and tournaments, an enormous game of chutes and ladders where there are no perennial losers. The worst teams fall to the equivalent of Class AAA baseball for the next season and the best add matches against the English, Spanish and others to their schedules in continental competitions. The Yankees would probably get a little more love outside New York if they regularly represented the United States against Cuban and Japanese teams.

“Bayern Munich is the only team that can do it,” Günter Netzer, a legend of German soccer and an analyst for German television, said. “The Bundesliga can’t keep up.”

Most top teams finance themselves either through enormous television contracts or the investment of billionaire owners. Unlike in Italy or Spain, where top clubs like Juventus or Real Madrid get all the money for the broadcasts of their games, the German teams jointly sell their television rights.

According to a study by the consulting firm Deloitte released last February, Bayern Munich ranks eighth in revenue among the world’s top soccer clubs. The team earns through broadcasting less than half what the top three teams do. For instance, the club brought in 32.8 million euros (about $48 million) through broadcasting in the season ending in 2006, compared with 172 million euros (about $250 million) for Juventus of Italy, the world’s top earner.

The English teams sell their rights together, but as the leading league they earn far more over all, with significant overseas broadcasting contracts, especially in Asia. They also have the benefit of extraordinarily wealthy investors pouring money into their teams, like the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, who bought Chelsea several years ago. German rules prohibit a controlling interest by foreign ownership and require that each club — with the exception of a couple that were grandfathered — be majority-owned by the local club membership organizations.

“I believe that as long as Germany doesn’t make changes in these two areas, in television and in shareholder culture, we will never reach the level in Europe where we were before,” Bayern’s Rummenigge said. According to the Deloitte study, there were four clubs in London in the world’s top 20, while only three were from Germany.

Rummenigge said he hoped that Bayern’s aggressiveness in acquiring talent would force other teams to follow suit, for the benefit of the Bundesliga. German teams tend to be more conservatively managed — especially in the percentage of revenue spent on player salaries — and far more profitable than in countries like Italy.

“At the end of the day, Bayern Munich is also interested in a more balanced league in Germany, rather than further dominance,” Deloitte’s Stefan Ludwig said. Ludwig said that Bayern had two and a half times the revenue of the average club in the top league, one of opposing fans’ favorite complaints.

Last Saturday’s scoreless draw with Eintracht raised the question of whether, for all the effort and money expended, the club could win the Bundesliga title. As the Yankees have shown, it takes more than cash. Germany will be watching. Bayern hopes that more and more people abroad join them.