Fear the Wall Roundtable: The Evil Empire Rumbles

Those Bavarians are always up to no good. We here at Fear the Wall have gained access to vital intelligence that Bayern Munich’s upper management, Uli Hoeneß, Karl-Heinz Runmenigge, and Hasan Salihamidzic, are set to give a press conference after Kovac’s pre-game presser tomorrow morning. The last time that happened, Jupp Heynckes was reappointed as Bayern München manager. The writers at FTW had a bit of fun with coming up with some crazy theories about what could be going down in the arroganz Allianz Arena.

Gregory Horn

Bayern’s going to create a farm system that eclipses Red Bull’s ownership scheme. I’m talking buying Benfica, Ajax, Basel, Copenhagen, Red Star Belgrade, Stade Rennais, Austria Vienna, Club Brugge, FK Krasnodar, Dynamo Kyiv, Rangers, Olympiacos, Malmö FF, Legia Warsaw, Sevilla, Arsenal, the absolute works. Buying mostly Europa league quality teams from every European league, they plan soak up all the talent in those leagues, much like they have done in the Bundesliga for the last several decades. In order to become the masters of Europe, Bayern then only needs to shuffle all of their talented players around to their inferior farm teams. After winning every domestic league and each team qualifies for European competition, they can finally have an easier path to the final in order to finally achieve the quest of winning their first treble since they bought the Bundesliga.

On top of that, Bayern is announcing a New York expansion team for the MLS called NYC FC Bayern München, or in short, NYCFCBM, which really shortens how long the name of the club is. That’s only there for the sake of making their monopoly plans official, like City Group and Red Bull Corporation (Sporting Division).

As an end result, Höneß and Rummenigge can sit atop their thrones made from melted silverware from the successes of the inferior clubs, while planning to build a trophy cabinet the size of the Allianz Arena for Bayern’s pending European domination... until they get knocked out by Real Madrid in the Champions League Semifinal.

Sean Keyser

Bayern Munich are in serious trouble. They’re in a huge injury crisis, the dressing room is divided, and most importantly, they’ve seen the Bunducksliga title slip away from their hands.

If there’s one thing an evil empire needs to re-establish itself, it’s an army. So are Bayern gonna do it by developing their own young army? Nope, they’re gonna stick to their old, frequently injured, overpaid, washed-up army. That’s why Bayern Munich are going to announce that they’ve authorized the creation of a so-called “Army of the Republic”, to be created by cloning Franck Ribéry one hundred thousands times. Bayern Munich will then loan our their Ribery-clones to every football club in the world, where they will await their secret mission.

At first, it will seem as if everything is normal. The Ribery-clones will bring selfishness and an egregious lack of pace to every club they inhabit, but they won’t do anything evil like, for instance, gouging someone’s eyes out. Then, however, Hoeneß will bring his secret plan to fruition. He will don his nicest black robes (with the T-Mobile logo on the front, of course) and issue order 66 to his Ribéry Clones, who will proceed to commit red-card worthy offenses against their own teammates.

The entire footballing world will be thrown into chaos, as great dynasties from FC Barcelona to Arsenal AC Milan suffer injury crises of their own. With no competition to stop them, Bayern Munich will breeze through domestic competitions. Finally, the Allianz Arena will emerge from the ashes as a space station with a super-weapon, capable of destroying domestic leagues through the use of dubious transfer policies everywhere. Bayern Munich will reign supreme once again, until they get knocked out by Real Madrid in the Champions League Semifinal.

Nick Kapatos

Seeing their once powerful empire crumbling around him and not having enough players at their immediate disposal to replenish their ranks, Bayern Munich Chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and President Uli Hoeneß gather together and seek out the Infinity Players. These immensely powerful Players contain all the talent, marketability, loyalty, and desire to win in the known footballing universe.

No one has ever been able to collect all six Infinity Players at once; some say they do not exist, others believe it is impossible to gather them all together, even more say that if they were to be able to be brought together, their collective egos would be uncontrollable for one manager. Knowing the risks, Rummenigge and Hoeneß decide to go through with their plan anyway, because screw competitive balance.

Already in possession of the Infinity Team-Sheet, the only known device able to contain the Players, the Bayern heads embark on a conquest across the known continent in search of these Players. Failure is not an option for these men, they must succeed or else their empire will fall forever.

They first raid their nearby neighbors, Borussia Dortmund and Borissia Mönchengladbach, for the Marketing and Goals Players. These Players, taking the mortal form of Christian Pulisic and Alassane Pléa, contain enough marketability and goal-scoring ability to power their clubs for a lifetime through social media followers, international call-ups, and goal-scoring titles even if the club itself is unable to achieve much success.

Once able to mount significant defenses against their rivals from Bavaria, the domains of Dortmund and Mönchengladbach have seen downturns that have sapped any ability to hold onto their Players, and the overlords of Bayern lay waste to their German rivals. Two down, four to go.

As they face continual criticism for their reliance on older players, a manager in over his head, and an inability to walk through an easy Champions League group, the Bayern duo next heads to Barcelona for the Hype Player. The Hype Player, known as Ousmane Dembélé in it’s mortal form, is the concentration of all the hyped-up young players known to the world. This Player has been around for centuries, embodying the most hyped-up players to have ever existed across time. The Hype Player is also the easiest to capture, as the promise of personal glory and trophies is more than enough to acquire it, and Bayern does just that to pry it away from Barcelona.

The Possession Player is their next target, and it resides in the small English city of Wolverhampton as Rúben Neves. Able to control and lead a midfield with unimaginable calm and poise, the Possession Player can transform any shaky team into a possession-based outfit that controls the ball with ease and dictates a match as they see fit. Even with their new, wealthy owner, the tiny English club is no match for the might of Bavaria and they collect the Possession Player.

One of the trickiest to obtain, the Loyalty Player is their next target in the form of Gianluigi Donnarumma. The Loyalty Player will not leave their club under any circumstances, no matter the size of the transfer offer or the potential wages received, out of loyalty for their childhood club. But knowing that AC Milan is not the club it once was, and knowing that they have the added Champions League matches at their disposal, the Bayern heads simply snatch the Loyalty Player from it’s current holders as it’s contract runs out.

Finally, with only one Player remaining, the two meet up and head to Paris for Kylian Mbappé… the Talent Player. The Talent Player is a combination of all the other Players, but only with the most realized talent out of all of them. He is able to tear apart any club single-handedly, attract swaths of international coverage, has more than lived up to his hype, and will always be thankful and remember where they came from. Still only a teenager it it’s current mortal form, the Talent Player is the most powerful and difficult to acquire Player in the universe. It’s current holders, the mighty Paris Saint-Germain, do not let go of the Talent Player without a fight and, although many lives are lost in this struggle, Bayern emerge victorious with the Talent Player.

Finally, in control of all the Infinity Players within the Infinity Team-Sheet, Bayern Munich becomes the single-most powerful club in the universe, both on and off the field. No one may rival them on on-field talent, off-field marketability, and headlines around the world speak about nothing but the unstoppable might of the Bavarians.

Höneß, admiring the Infinity Players, writes each of the names onto the Infinity Team-Sheet, and clicks the back of the pen into place. At that moment, half of the Bundesliga disbanded, saving the league from the suffering shithousery from withering and dying clubs and embarrassment on the international stage.

Bayern still gets knocked out by Real Madrid in the Champions League Semifinal.