Su Dong, So Good!

Because of the 2010 South Africa World Cup, the schedules of the various national leagues were compressed for the new season.

The Bundesliga was no exception.

As early as late June, the Bundesliga had announced the schedule for the new season.

The opening round would begin on August 7, and the final round would end on May 8, 2010.

The result of the compressed schedule was that the Bundesliga's Winter Break this season was the shortest in recent years, lasting only one month.

Of course, saying that was a little too much like humblebragging, because the Winter Breaks in the Big Four Leagues were basically not as long as the Bundesliga's. The Premier League did not even have a Winter Break.

Bayern's official itinerary had also been released early. This summer, Bayern would not travel all the way to Asia or North America, but would instead remain in Europe, especially in Germany, to compete.

This was of course not because Bayern wanted to recuperate, but because Bayern's sponsor, German Telecom, had organized a German Telecom Cup friendly tournament. Bayern was the main attraction of the event, so the club needed to stay in Europe for training and would have difficulty organizing an overseas training camp.

After two consecutive years of overseas training camps, Bayern had reaped abundant rewards. This summer, however, the club would focus on the German domestic and European markets.

As a bargaining chip, German Telecom increased its sponsorship of Bayern.

In 2002, after Bayern ended its thirteen-year partnership with Opel, it announced that it had signed with German Telecom. The sponsorship fee rose from Opel's original fifteen million euros per year to twenty million euros.

However, because Bayern's results were poor in those years, the sponsorship fee remained at twenty million euros when the contract was subsequently