A lot can be made of the struggles of rookies Thomas Mueller and Holger Badstuber in the Champions League this season, but there can be no disputing the key role played by one of Bayern's own stock in that competition and in the domestic game too. Bastian Schweinsteiger has emerged from the fringes on which he found himself last season to become the beating heart of Louis van Gaal's Bayern Munich.
After breaking into the FCB first team in 2002 at the age of 18 following sterling work in the youth and reserve sides, Schweinsteiger certainly looked the part. A wide midfield player, capable of plowing the left or right flank, his youthful exuberance and his work-rate marked him out as a potential Bayern legend in the making. International honors were not long in following and still some five months short of his 26th birthday, he is approaching 75 caps for die Nationalmannschaft and 300 appearances for his beloved Bayern.
The middle years of the last decade saw 'Schweini', Philipp Lahm and Lukas Podolski lauded as the future of German football but something went amiss for the first and third of that trio. Poldi is in free fall, with two goals all season for FC Koeln, but Schweinsteiger has been restored after a prolonged wobble.
Singled out for criticism by no less a figure than Franz Beckenbauer, in Janaury 2007, the first cracks appeared in the hitherto faultless facade of Schweinsteiger. After the World Cup, and more specifically, two long range strikes against Portugal in the bronze medal match, Schweinsteiger was one of the golden boys. But after watching the midfielder punch in a dismal display against Werder Bremen as a playmaker, der Kaiser interjected: "He hasn't done anything sensible there because that's not his position."
Being all but assured of his starting place at the club, under Felix Magath, Juergen Klinsmann and Jupp Heynckes, there existed the perception that Schweini was phoning-in his subpar displays. When deployed wide on the right, there was lacking a responsibility in his game, an unwillingness to get involved like previous seasons. Question marks existed over his future; Juventus were said to be interested, he was alleged to have begun to learn Italian. Bayern were not happy, and Schweini was about to hear all about it.
“The demands that we make of them [the players] have to match with the payments that their contracts bring them. They will be judged on those. Not everybody is performing at the levels their contracts demand. You have to confront him with the question of if he wants to continue to be just one of the boys, if the performances he has shown this term are really what he wants or to be in our team.”
Those were the undecorated words of Bayern Munich's manager, Uli Hoeness, at the tail end of last season. Schweinsteiger bore the brunt of heavy criticism from within the Bayern ranks last term as his early promise had tailed off into something resembling anonymity. With the signing of Arjen Robben last summer, who was expected to dove-tail into a dynamic wing-partnership with Franck Ribery, Schweinsteiger's first team opportunities and indeed, his Bayern future looked in jeopardy.
The campaign did not start too smartly for the new coach, van Gaal, nor Schweini himself. Lined-up wide left in the absence of Ribery, or behind the strikers as Alexander Baumjohann foundered, he could not carve out an identity in the team. He told Kicker in August: "It would be okay if the coach wants me to play as a playmaker, but I think that I'm better in a more defensive role. I hate to see our opponents create chances and I'd rather break up play than make play."
What followed was a tactical reinvention. Gone was van Gaal's stubborn blue-print for a 4-4-2, with Ribery the trequartista, and in came a more fluid system, which heavily benefited the France international and Robben in the wide positions. The trainer placed a large degree of trust in Schweinsteiger and he has become the fulcrum of the team. Centrally, he provides steel in the midfield as well as the craft and guile that made him such a threat out wide. He has been nothing short of revelatory. After Robben, Schweinsteiger has been the Bundesliga's second-best player of the season, becoming more of a 'go to' player than either the Dutchman or Ribery.
A modicum of credit must go to van Gaal for extracting his worth from Schweinsteiger. However, the restoration of the player is essentially down to one person - himself. Maturity, bravery, responsibility are words you might not associate with a lightweight winger, but all these strings and more have been added to Schweini's bow this season.
Throughout the league campaign, he has been the target of passes from full-backs, central defenders, wingers and strikers. When Bayern are not in possession, he is rarely more than 10 yards away. He is, with no exaggeration, Bayern's Xavi.
He may have a long way to go before he reaches the Spaniard's standard of utter midfield control, but he is going the right way about it. If he continues to improve at the rate of knots that he has done this season, then the Bayern and Germany teams could be molded in his image. Only 25, the best is yet to come.
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