Looking back at Mats Hummels' 'first' Bayern Munich debut

Back at Bayern Munich for a second spell with the club, following a controversial €35 million transfer from Borussia Dortmund, Mats Hummels will discover a much different club to the one he left behind as a 19-year-old in 2008.

The stylish central defender returns to find his boyhood club in rude health; Bayern are basking in their 11th double and the fifth since Hummels made his only league appearance for the Bavarians in May 2007.

Four months earlier, at the tender age of 18, Hummels signed his first full professional contract, having graced Bayern's youth teams from the age of seven. As he learnt his trade, though, he suffered the fate of many talented youngsters and had to make do with reserve-team football in Regionalliga  the Sud.

At that fledgling stage of his career, the painful truth was that there was simply no way past the proven South American central defensive partnership of Martin Demichelis and Lucio. Throw the ungainly, yet reliable, Daniel van Buyten into the mix and Hummels had a distinct problem getting anywhere near the first team, however badly Bayern were doing at the time in the Bundesliga.

Despite two consecutive doubles, Bayern axed Felix Magath as coach during that 2006-07 winter of discontent and rehired 2001 Champions League-winning coach Ottmar Hitzfeld to salvage a stuttering campaign -- to no avail.

It was a dreadful season. Bayern exited the Champions League to AC Milan in the quarterfinals and finished an embarrassing fourth in the Bundesliga; the Bavarians' worst placing since 1994-95 when they languished in sixth. Almost unconceivably these days, Stuttgart won the title, snatching the crown from Schalke on the final day of the season.

Hitzfeld favoured experience and only gave Hummels a meagre 38 minutes as a substitute vs. Mainz in the final game of the Bundesliga season. The meaningless game against Jurgen Klopp's already-relegated side proved to be Hummels' one and only Bundesliga appearance for Bayern first time around.

The teenager replaced Demichelis seven minutes after half-time in a game that had all the hallmarks of a testimonial for the retiring Mehmet Scholl, who called it a day after winning eight league titles in 15 years at the club. For the record, Bayern won 5-2 -- their biggest home win of the season -- but were left to ponder the delights of UEFA Cup football.

Since playing once for Bayern Munich, Mats Hummels has made over 350 appearances for Borussia Dortmund and Germany.

Closer inspection of Bayern's squad at that time gives an indication of why Bayern toiled throughout that campaign. You could make a case for saying they were a feeder club to the Premier League, as strikers Roque Santa Cruz and Claudio Pizarro soon departed for Blackburn and Chelsea respectively, while oft-injured midfielder Owen Hargreaves was offloaded for €25m to Manchester United.

Workhorse Hasan Salihamidzic and Iranian star Ali Karimi also bid farewell, while legendary goalkeeper Oliver Kahn got injured during the warmup, which allowed the 40-year-old backup Bernd Dreher a rare appearance in goal. Local lads Andreas Ottl and Christian Lell, meanwhile, simply weren't up to scratch.

The Bayern hierarchy vowed never again to experience the embarrassment of that lowly finish and dug deep to invest in the attacking talents of Franck Ribery (€25m), Luca Toni (€12.5m) and Miroslav Klose (€15m) to prevent a repeat.

After the spending spree, Bayern romped to another domestic double the following season, but scraped through a UEFA Cup group featuring Bolton Wanderers, Aris Saloniki and Sporting Braga before collapsing in the semifinal against Zenit.

Breno, "a signing for the future" according to chairman Karl-Heinz Rummennigge, arrived for €12m in December 2007 to further intensify competition for places at the back. The acquisition of Brazil's next big thing proved the final straw for Hummels' first team chances and, a few weeks later, he was dispatched on loan to Dortmund where he became a regular under Thomas Doll.

However, it wasn't until Klopp took over at resurgent BVB in the summer of 2008 that Hummels' fortunes were transformed and he revelled in a superb defensive partnership with Neven Sobotic, who just so happened to make his league debut for Mainz on the same day as did Hummels' for Bayern.

Though Bayern again changed managers in 2008, with Jurgen Klinsmann taking over, Hummels chose to remain in Westphalia and signed permanently for BVB for just €4.2m the following February. The Bayern bankers will be only too aware that they've had to splurge an extra €30m to rectify the costly error of judgment they made in letting him go.

The only player who remains with Bayern from that day in May 2007 is "Mr. Dependable," Philipp Lahm. The-then 23-year-old finished an ever-present in Hitzfeld's misfiring side and it would be fitting if Lahm lines up as skipper when Hummels makes his second debut for the club in August, against Dortmund in the German Super Cup.