A big week for nostalgia in the latest pre-season jousting. There was the sight of Gianluigi Buffon saving three Inter Milan penalties in the jersey of Juventus, the club he left barely a year ago.
There was Diego Costa scoring four times against Real Madrid in New Jersey, and picking up a red card: vintage Costa, much more like the untameable warrior the club came to love when he spearheaded Atletico Madrid’s Spanish title triumph of 2014 than the irregular Costa of most his third spell at the club over the last 18 months.
This weekend, look forward to a roll-back-the-years reappearance of Mats Hummels in a bright yellow jersey, as the accomplished centre-back, 30, lines up for his old club, Borussia Dortmund. He will be going up against his other old club, Bayern Munich, in the German Super Cup, the curtain-raiser to the Bundesliga, a league where to-and-froing between the two heavyweight contenders is becoming a summer staple.
Hummels’s move from Bayern to Dortmund, for a fee that could rise to €38 million (Dh155.3m), is the latest in a pattern. Not long ago, Bayern’s financial might was being used systematically to stymie Dortmund and to arrest a momentum that had seen the Ruhr club beat the Bavarians to successive league titles, in 2011 and 2012.
First, Bayern whisked Mario Gotze away, signing their rival’s brightest young prospect amid great rancour. Then, Robert Lewadowski joined Bayern from Dortmund. Hummels, who had actually started his career as a junior at Bayern, made the same journey south in 2016. They each won every league they contested with Bayern.
But now, more traffic flows in the opposite direction. Gotze rejoined Dortmund three summers ago, after an inconsistent stint with Bayern. He came through some initial antagonism from Dortmund supporters, and will now be reunited with Hummels, his fellow World Cup winner.
What Hummels appreciates is that Dortmund, with its fervent home support, is an institution where loyalty is a double-edged sword. Certainly, to leave the Westfalen for a rival bent on directly weakening its main challenger in its transfer strategy is to make many local enemies.
But Dortmund is also a club that players choose to come back to, because it feels so like a true home: Shinji Kagawa left for Manchester United and returned two years later; Nuri Sahin came back after unfulfilling voyages to Real Madrid and Liverpool. Hummels is drawn by the same magnet to a place with a real, visceral sense of its unique identity.
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Atletico Madrid has that character. Hence footballers like Fernando Torres, Filipe Luis and former captain Gabi willingly return for second spells there, stimulated by the upward momentum and valued for their understanding of the club by head coach, Diego Simeone, himself a former Atletico player.
Diego Costa came back after three years at Chelsea and, after injury setbacks last season, his colleagues detect his special cocktail of aggression, industry and skill is back to its most potent.
“Diego Costa could turn out looking like our best ‘new’ signing,” said midfielder Saul Niguez after Costa led the extraordinary 7-3 win over Real Madrid on Friday – this in a summer when new signings worth €250m have joined Atletico.
Juventus also like to boast of their own special DNA. Buffon came to represent it as much as any player in the years between 2001 and 2018, when, aged 40, he left for a late-career adventure with another elite club, signing for Paris Saint-Germain.
The goalkeeper was largely second choice there. Buffon will also be deputy, behind Wojciech Szczesny, at the start of Juve’s defence of their Serie A title. But at least at Juve he will feel he belongs.
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The best summer transfers
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Other senior Juve men have found it hard to depart and stay away. Last summer, defender Leonardo Bonucci returned to Juventus, where he had spent seven glittering seasons, after only one year at AC Milan. Bonucci was welcomed back for his leadership, among other qualities. Likewise Buffon, who, even without the first-team gloves, is invited to re-establish his authority as dressing-room general.
The Hummels sequel at Dortmund gives him similar responsibilities. “He is a leader and that’s the type we need,” said the experienced Dortmund midfielder Axel Witsel, part of a generally young team who lost the leadership of the title race in the gripping tail-end of last season, as Bayern’s more mature unit overtook them.
By then, the German champions were already planning a summer rejuvenation. Hummels's departure from Bayern coincides with the arrival of two 23-year-old defenders, Lucas Hernandez and Benjamin Pavard.
It is a younger Bayern who take on a worldlier Dortmund on Saturday and, if this season is to resemble the last, all the way through a neck-and-neck duel for the title over the next nine months.
