Uli Hoeneß walked into the inner courtyard of Munich city hall on Sunday and did not soften his verdict on Bayern’s season. “Besser geht’s nicht!”, the 74-year-old said as he stopped to speak to the press, a line that landed just days before FC Bayern meet VfB Stuttgart in the DFB-Pokalfinale in Berlin.
The praise has a sharp edge because Bayern know how quickly a season can be re-read after one bad night. The club was beaten by Eintracht Frankfurt in the 2018 final, and Joshua Kimmich later called that campaign a “brutal enttäuschende Saison.” That memory hangs over this one as the cup final approaches, with Bayern still in position to turn a strong year into a double if they win in Berlin.
Christoph Freund made that ambition plain on the eve of the final, saying the club wants to crown the season with the double in Berlin. He added that Bayern have not been there for a long time and called it a “ganz, ganz großes Ziel.” The sporting director’s words reflected the mood around the club: satisfied, but not finished.
Kimmich, speaking Friday evening at the pre-final press conference, pushed back against the idea that a single result should define everything. “Von außen betrachtet zählen immer nur die Titel,” he said, before adding that he no longer measures the success of a season by one game the way he did years ago. “Ich bin weit davon entfernt, den Erfolg nur rein an Titeln zu messen,” the 31-year-old said, even as he acknowledged that outside judgment often rests on trophies alone.
The contrast with 2018 remains the clearest warning for Bayern. That was the year Jupp Heynckes had to rescue the team after Carlo Ancelotti was dismissed as coach, and the club still finished with the bitter loss to Frankfurt in the cup final. This time, the football has looked sturdier over a longer stretch, and Bayern have been more convincing across the season than they were eight years ago. Even compared with the 2020 treble campaign, the article says, they have been more consistently convincing now.
Vincent Kompany sounded uninterested in the pressure game when he was asked about the stakes. “In meiner Motivation spielt das keine Rolle,” he said, adding that after the final everyone will have an opinion. “Nach dem Spiel wird es von allen eine Meinung geben, davon bin ich überzeugt.” For Bayern, that is the reality of Berlin: win, and the season is remembered as a success; lose, and the warning from 2018 will be impossible to ignore.
So the final against Stuttgart is not only about a trophy. It is about whether Bayern can finish the year with the double and lock in the broader judgment that Hoeneß voiced on Sunday, or whether one match will reopen old doubts that the club has spent the season trying to leave behind.
