Yes, OK, this is the German renaissance – and the juxtaposition of Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich in Saturday’s European Cup final certainly indicates that German football is doing something right.
But, in one small detail, the match is a notable coup for the English game: it is being played at Wembley, the second time in just three years that European club football’s flagship occasion has been staged underneath the now famous arch.
Such a short interval between finals is unprecedented for one given venue: the smallest gap prior to this over the 57 previous finals was four years, for both Wembley itself (twin towers Wembley, in 1968 and 1971) and Vienna’s Prater Stadium (as it then was, in 1987 and 1990).
European football politics being what they are, I doubt very much this 2013 final would have been given to Wembley were it not for its coincidence with the 150th anniversary of the Football Association (FA), the world’s oldest such body.
But I also doubt very much Wembley would have got the gig again so quickly if it did not make sense for UEFA in other ways.
This made me wonder, in turn, whether this vast sporting cathedral in north-west London might not be about to start coming into its own, after years of being branded a costly and extravagant millstone around the FA’s neck.
One trusted UEFA source did much to confirm my suspicions.
“It’s obvious that we love the place,” he said.
“We can accommodate 90,000 people; London is easy to access; the viewing experience is wonderful; it keeps everybody happy.”
Wembley’s extensive corporate entertainment capability was not, according to the source, as important an element in the venue’s appeal as I had expected.
But size, for UEFA in this case, absolutely does count: “The essential thing is we can conveniently accommodate 35,000 fans from each club.”
We embarked on an informal run around of the main available alternative venues of similar scale, and came up with a very short list.
What is more, the economic and fiscal turbulence afflicting Western Europe, combined with other factors such as UEFA’s own decision to stage Euro 2020 at existing venues across the continent (including probably Wembley), suggest that shiny, new, cutting-edge competitors to Wembley may well prove slower to emerge than one might have supposed two or three years ago.
So, in terms of competitive position in the market for showpiece team-sports occasions, Wembley, for now, is sitting pretty – and is likely to remain so for a number of years.
Future one-off bookings already include two Rugby World Cup matches in September 2015 and, while it will now return to the back of the queue, I wouldn’t rule out squeezing in another Champions League finale before the end of the decade.
It gets better: careful scrutiny of the FA’s 2011 accounts, the most recent available, when Wembley of course hosted that dream Barcelona versus Manchester United final, suggests that, financially, the stadium had already then started to turn the corner.
Segmental information in the notes to these accounts shows that “stadium and non-FA event management” nudged into profit in 2011, against pre-tax losses of more than £12 million the previous year – a noteworthy turnaround.
There is still a long way to go: bank loans in relation to the stadium funding then amounted to £286 million “net of unamortised arrangement fees”.
The interest on those loans, at a fixed rate of 7.1%, cost the FA £23 million in 2011 alone.
But, as the report also makes clear, the FA “continues to make both the mandatory and target repayments, reducing the level of bank debt by £17 million in the year”.
Straying briefly into the land of clichés, the debt mountain is coming down and a light can be glimpsed at the end of the tunnel.
It looks, by the way, as though the FA made £5 million from the staging of the 2011 Champions League final at Wembley, with £16 million of additional turnover offset partly by £11 million of extra costs.
It is starting to look, then, as though those of us who for years have regarded Wembley as a hugely impressive but desperately hard-to-justify indulgence may need to start adjusting our message.
This may be the longer-term lesson of this week’s extended German party.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938