Bayern Munich Suffer loss to Hoffenheim

Bayern Munich lost their second game of the Bundesliga season on Tuesday 1-0 away to TSG Hoffenheim, but they almost welcomed the unusual experience as a useful wake-up call. "It was an important sign for us, to show us that we're nearly half as good being as passive [as we were in the first half]," defender Mats Hummels said while raising a metaphorical index finger.

Borussia Dortmund, by contrast, ran out 3-0 winners at home to Hamburger SV, yet found plenty of reasons to fault themselves. "I'm very worried about our schedule in light of all the energy we expended today," Thomas Tuchel said. The rather downbeat coach added that "a critical analysis" of BVB's failure to take their chances earlier and concede too many opportunities ("a roller coaster ride") would follow.

If the counterintuitive reactions to these two results show anything, it's surely that Bayern and Dortmund, facing off Saturday in the biggest game of the Bundesliga calendar, operate on their own terms. The table might not adequately reflect it right now -- Dortmund are only fourth -- but the two most domineering German clubs of the decade can afford to look beyond individual successes or setbacks, secure in the knowledge that the big picture is just fine.

After a wobbly start, Bayern will win the Bundesliga for the fifth time in a row and are still in the running for two more big trophies. After a wobbly start of their own, Dortmund will qualify for the Champions League and are still in the running for two more big trophies. Saturday's meeting at the Allianz Arena is slightly more important, points-wise, to Dortmund -- they want to make up ground on RB Leipzig and TSG Hoffenheim -- but the scoreline has relatively little bearing on either club's targets for the season.

For the fifth year running, the emotional pull of the game marketed as "Der Klassiker" abroad by the league is rather diminished by Bayern's unassailable 15-point lead. And there's no sign of any verbal skirmishes or attempts to lure yet another key BVB player south to add a bit of spice to proceedings this year, either.

If a proper football rivalry is defined by the deep-seated need to not just win but exact hurt on the enemy, you won't find much of it Saturday night. But that is not to say the game is devoid of meaning -- not at all. Rather, its importance is not wrapped up in the identity of the opponents. Both teams pursue aims that exist wholly independent of each other. There's no need to pretend otherwise.