MUNICH (AP) \u2014 Bayern Munich\u2019s players lined up with the image of a white cockatoo statue on their T-shirts as they celebrated winning another Bundesliga title on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Bayern\u2019s 4-2 win over Stuttgart clinched the title with four rounds to go after opening an unassailable 15-point lead over second-placed Borussia Dortmund.<\/p>\n
But few were expecting to see the cockatoo again after it played a central role in the celebrations when Bayern also won the Bundesliga title last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had to wait a long time before we could let him out of his cage again,\u201d Bayern midfielder Leon Goretzka joked after celebrating with the cockatoo statue that made its first appearance last season.<\/p>\n
Last year\u2019s title was won when Bayern wasn\u2019t playing \u2014 Freiburg\u2019s draw with second-placed Bayer Leverkusen left Bayern an unassailable eight points clear with two rounds remaining.<\/p>\n
Bayern\u2019s players had been following the Freiburg-Leverkusen match on TV in a Munich restaurant and they took a shine to a statue of a cockatoo there. They unofficially adopted it as their new team mascot. One of the players \u2013 it\u2019s not clear who \u2013 took the cockatoo statue from the restaurant and it subsequently claimed a prominent position on the stage a week later when the team was presented with the Bundesliga trophy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not saying who it was,\u201d Bayern coach Vincent Kompany said at the time. \u201cThe story will come out some time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MUNICH (AP) \u2014 Bayern Munich\u2019s players lined up with the image of a white cockatoo statue on their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5729,5,331,640,641,799,638,795,4235,218,1595],"class_list":{"0":"post-5866","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-bayern-munich-cockatoo","9":"tag-germany","10":"tag-leon-goretzka","11":"tag-package-100024-ap-online","12":"tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","13":"tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","14":"tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","15":"tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","16":"tag-product-32506-ap-online-feature-stories","17":"tag-stuttgart","18":"tag-vincent-kompany"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}