Bayern Munich could win the Bundesliga championship this weekend without even kicking a ball.

With a 12-point lead over Werder Bremen and Schalke 04 and four matches left, Bayern — who don’t play again until visiting VfL Wolfsburg on Sunday — will be watching from their recliners on Saturday when Bremen and Schalke try to keep their faint hopes alive.

Should Bremen and Schalke fail to win their respective home matches against Energie Cottbus and Hanover 96, Bayern will be crowned champions.  

The Germans have an interesting term for winning the championship in that fashion — “Sofa-meister” (couch champion).  

But Bayern captain Oliver Kahn said it doesn’t matter how they win a record 21st German championship — even if they take it lying down.  

“If we end up winning as Sofa-meister, that’s the way it goes,” Kahn told Premiere Television on Sunday. “You can’t change it. That’s the way it is. Obviously you’d rather win the championship on the pitch.”  

Kahn missed Bayern’s 4-1 win over VfB Stuttgart on Sunday due to injury. He said he would have played if Bayern could have won the championship on Sunday — which would have been possible had Bremen lost and Schalke not won on Saturday. As it turned out Bremen managed a 3-3 draw at Karlsruhe and Schalke beat Hamburg SV 1-0.

So Kahn didn’t even suit up for the match on Sunday…and gave interviews about “Sofameisters” instead.

Erik Kirschbaum, Berlin

PHOTO: Bayern Munich’s Franck Ribery celebrates with coach Ottmar Hitzfeld during the German Bundesliga soccer match against Stuttgart, April 27 REUTERS/Michael Dalder

Luca Toni has evidently not learned much German in the eight months since he moved over the Alps a few hundred kilometres north of native Italy to the Bavarian capital of Munich.

With plenty of translators at his service and a wide range  of fine Italian restaurants in Munich to pick from, there’s little need to spend time studying the difficult tongue-twisting language of Goethe and Schiller. His interviews in the German media are invariably translated from Italian.

But Bayern Munich coach Ottmar Hitzfeld revealed on Sunday that Toni has in the meantime enriched his vocabulary with at least one German term - Tor (goal).

“I asked him at half-time if he wanted to play the whole match or come off and he just said ‘Tor, Tor, Tor’,” Hitzfeld said after Toni had scored twice in the first half against Dortmund, by which time they were leading 4-0.

Toni, who came to Bayern from Fiorentina in the close-season, has proven that you don’t need to speak fluent German to understand what keeps your German employers happy. That one three-letter word “Tor” is enough.

He has 31 goals in all competitions and leads the Bundesliga in scoring with 18 goals with six matches left.

Even though he didn’t score a third goal against Dortmund (the match finished 5-0, but it was Andreas Ottl who got the fifth), Toni ended up playing the full 90 minutes on Sunday just three days after going 120 minutes (and scoring twice in the last five) in Bayern’s epic UEFA Cup tie at Getafe.

But it’s not only his goal-scoring that makes Toni such a watchable player.

“Even when his shots miss, the anguish on Toni’s face and the gesticulations with his hands are so expressive and so much fun to watch,” said one commentator on Premiere Television.

PHOTO: Toni scores his first goal against Dortmund during their Bundesliga match in Munich, April 13, 2008. REUTERS/Alexandra Beier

There are of course many ways to get sent off, but Jan Simak may be the first player to earn a red card for giving a referee the “Doppel Tomaten auf den Augen” (Two tomatoes on the eyes) gesture.

The Carl Zeiss Jena playmaker’s unfortunate ejection in the 51st minute of their German Cup semi-final match at Borussia Dortmund - when they were behind 1-0 but close to equalising - pretty much took the life out of what was until then a good game.

The relegation-threatened second division underdogs were putting up a great fight against Dortmund and had the Bundesliga side on the ropes. After Simak was sent off Dortmund got two late goals to win 3-0.

Perhaps Simak, a Czech, did not fully understand the impact in German of the gesture — covering his eyes with his fists. “Tomaten auf den Augen” (Tomatoes on the eyes) is a popular phrase in Germany to refer to referees who were blind to something obvious that happened in front of their eyes. Some newspapers even publish pictures of the referee with giant tomatoes covering their eyes after particularly daft decisions.

Or perhaps it was all just a cultural misunderstanding by the Czech. He didn’t realise German referee Manuel Graefe would feel insulted to the extent that he would give him a second yellow card just seconds after flashing him the first for his mild complaints about a foul.

There have been other misunderstandings lately. Hertha Berlin’s French-speaking Swiss coach Lucien Favre was able to avoid a suspension by convincing league officials that he did not make the insulting “bird” gesture (which in Germany usually means “I think you’re crazy”) to a referee in Hertha’s 1-1 draw at Dortmund a week earlier, as the referee had charged, while complaining about an erroneous red card that was then quickly rescinded.

Simak did not attempt such a defence.

“Yes, unfortunately I did,” Simak later told journalists when asked if his gesture was the “double tomato”. “It was a mistake. I’m unhappy about being sent off for it. But soccer is a sport full of emotions.”

And maybe tomatoes.