A Shock Loss Or Merely Food For Thought? Guardiola Returns With a Bang In Six Goal Thriller

While many of us desperately await the start of the new season and long for news to be about more than whether the colour of Gareth Bale's underwear mean he's Madrid-bound, the Super Cup Final in Germany brought back glittering memories of the Champions League as Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich renewed their rivalry.

Jurgen Klopp has famously described the Bavarian giants as armed with bazookers while his Dortmund side were likened to Robin Hood style characters who would come to the battle with nothing but arrows, determined to defeat the seemingly-unbeatable with a blend of courage and determination.

The sale of Mario Gotze at the start of the summer meant reinforcements wer need in the Dortmund camp, with the club securing the signatures of Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to build up on their attacking line-up. Klopp has commented that the side are on the lookout for more signings this summer but the two faced a tough test in their first match in yellow against the club that stole Dortmund's most treasured player.

And another transfer narrative was running through the build-up to the game as well; that of Roberto Lewandowski. Told by Dortmund that he won't be sold to Bayern Munich this summer despite entering the final 12 months of his contract, the striker has made his dissatisfaction over the situation very clear.

Coming up against the side he had hoped to be playing with was clearly a difficult feat and Lewandowski himself let it slip how unhappy he is with the board's decision to make him stay.

"I feel fine in the team, but with other people I do have a problem," he told reporters after the match. "That is a difficult issue."

You would have thought there was enough narrative before the game with Lewandowski and Gotze but of course there was also the small matter of Pep Guardiola's return to management. While the Spaniard has been in the media since agreeing his move to Bayern towards the end of last season it was easy to forget that the manager had yet to coach in a competitive game since his time at Barcelona over a year ago.

No stranger to controversy, Guardiola's move for Thiago Alcantara in the transfer market was one that seemed unlikely with the impressive midfield already at his disposal, but thaving snapped up the Spanish midfielder he has quickly adapted to life in Germany.

But with much of the attention on how Bayern would play under Guardiola it was Dortmund that took advantage as Marco Reus demonstrated his ability in front of goal with a brace in the eventual 4-2 win over their bitter rivals.

Without Manuel Neuer, Bastian Schweinsteiger or Franck Ribery, Bayern were exposed particularly in their usually-tight formations as Dortmund were able to find space and time to create multiple chances.

Besides Reus' two goals, Ilkay Gundogan was also in sensational form, providing an assist for the former Monchengladbach star and scoring himself.

Arjen Robben may have been the hero in the Champions League final as he broke through Dortmund's defence to win the match, and in this case he did so on two occasions but it wasn't enough as centre-back Daniel van Buyten turned the ball into his own net to help gift Klopp's side the victory.

While you can never take to much from what is essentially a pre-season game, when Dortmund and Bayern take centre stage there will always be particularly prickly atmosphere.

In the last 13 years, there have been five different winners of the Bundesliga honours, though remaining in contention after winning the trophy has proven particularly difficult in modern German football.

With Bayern boasting by far the most revenue and ability to purchase players in higher wage brackets as a result, teams like Wolfsburg and Stuttgart have both failed to compete as young players have made the move to Germany's top teams and the side has been left in free fall - the former finished last season in 11th place, the latter in 12th and fellow recent title winner Werder Bremen in 14th.

While the trend has looked to continue with Dortmund - Bayern plucked their best player on the back of winning the Bundesliga in record time, and tried to take their top striker too - Klopp isn't giving up without a fight.

And after the 4-2 win at the weekend it looks as though his arrows could prove lethal after all.