Dortmund best of the rest as Bundesliga clubs grasp at Bayern Munich’s coattails | Andy Brassell

BVB are re-energised while Leverkusen have stabilised but the question remains: can anyone stop the champions? The Franz Beckenbauer Supercup has a modicum more intensity than most of its European equivalents. There are many reasons for this. The Bundesliga’s traditional season curtain-raiser pitting league champions against cup winners is not played on neutral territory, giving it the feeling of a domestic game with proper stakes. German fans would also never accept it taking place on foreign soil, as the Borussia Dortmund managing director, Carsten Cramer, reiterated in clear terms over the course of the weekend. It feels like a match, rather than a showpiece. It had one other factor to ratchet up the adrenaline this year. It was the sense that the two teams that most expect to be the season’s best, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, were the participants, with last term’s second-placed side hosting the champions. There was enough in the game to suggest that the latter might be able inconvenience the former, as Bayern held on to win the season’s first trophy after BVB followed a thoroughly dominant first half from the visitors with a vastly improved second period of their own in reply...