Roy Makaay has thrown a sharp little reminder into the Bayern vs Dortmund debate: the so-called Klassiker did not carry the same weight in his playing days. That matters, because when a Bayern striker icon says the rivalry has grown, he is not selling nostalgia — he is pointing out how football reputations are built over time.
Makaay said he only knows one "Klassiker", and in his view it is Ajax Amsterdam against Feyenoord Rotterdam. That alone tells you where he stands on the modern framing of Bayern against Dortmund. In his eyes, the label has been stretched into something bigger than it once was.
Makaay’s view of Bayern vs Dortmund
The former Bayern man, who played in the Bundesliga from 2003 bis 2007, was clear about the gap between then and now. "Zu meiner aktiven Zeit war es nicht so groß, wie es jetzt geworden ist. Unsere großen Konkurrenten waren Schalke, der Hamburger SV und Werder Bremen," he said. That is a pointed answer, and it cuts straight through the tidy modern story that Bayern vs Dortmund has always been the division’s defining fixture.
According to that context, Borussia Dortmund were not viewed as Bayern’s biggest headache during Makaay’s active years. Instead, the real pressure came from Schalke, Hamburger SV and Werder Bremen. The timeline backs that up: Schalke schrammte 2001 nur knapp am Meistertitel vorbei, Werder holte unter Thomas Schaaf 2004 die Meisterschaft nach Bremen, and Schalke schrammte 2005 erneut nur knapp am Meistertitel vorbei.
Why the rivalry feels bigger now
That is exactly why Makaay’s comment lands. Bayern vs Dortmund is now treated as a heavyweight occasion, a fixture wrapped in expectation and national attention. But his point is that this status was earned later, not handed down from some eternal truth. In other words, the Klassiker label has been strengthened by recent history, not preserved unchanged from his era.
There is nothing wrong with that, of course. Football rivalries evolve. Some are invented by context, some are magnified by success, and some become bigger because the sport needs them to be. Bayern vs Dortmund fits that pattern. It is a larger event now than it was in Makaay’s time, and his comment makes that plain without any need for drama.
What it also does is offer a useful corrective. The modern game loves to flatten history into a simple line, but Bayern’s real domestic battles in the early 2000s looked different. Makaay was there, and he is telling us that the headline rivalry people now celebrate was not the main story then. That is a neat, sharp reminder that the Bundesliga’s biggest fixture did not always look the way it does today.
