All the incomprehensible stats don't do justice to the gulf in class between them and a competition not quite worthy of the name

The word itself had become joke, a brutal eight-letter punchline that knocked down all of Bayern Munich's notorious pomposity, their sense of entitlement and delusions of grandeur. But on Tuesday night, it ceased to be funny. Borussia Dortmund manager Jürgen Klopp reached for it in his impromptu eulogy for the new Bundesliga champions, because there was really no other way to describe their superiority. "They are incredible," said Klopp. "We truly need binoculars to see them. And I can even enjoy watching them at times because they're playing fantastically well."

Binoculars. Fernglas in German. Uli Hoeness, the soon-to-be incarcerated president and architect of this Bayern team, had coined the phrase in May 2007. "We have to make sure that there will be wailing when the others are looking at us in the table with binoculars," Hoeness had announced at the time. The grandiose mission statement had come back to haunt him many times over the next couple of years as Bayern stumbled from one managerial crisis to the next without making any real lasting progress.

Louis van Gaal's arrival in 2009 laid the foundation of the upswing but it needed Jupp Heynckes to take the team to an unprecedented treble and the fastest Bundesliga title, 25 points ahead of the opposition in 2012-13. In Pep Guardiola's first season in charge, they've opened up the same gap with seven games to go.

The 3-1 win at Hertha Berlin sealed a 24th championship that was never in doubt. All the incomprehensible numbers – 77 points from 27 matches, 52 games unbeaten, 20 wins in a row – don't quite do justice to the difference in class between them and a competition that wasn't quite worthy of the name. Bayern won the championship in March, earlier than last year and earlier than anyone else in any major European league, but, in truth, they have been out of sight from the first kick-off in August. "They were too dominant, too regal, too relaxed, too elegant, too cool for the rest of the league," wrote Spiegel Online.

The ease with which the Reds have dismantled allcomers – their only two draws, 1-1s at Freiburg and Leverkusen in the autumn, appear to be freak results, retrospectively – has been unsettling at times. Extensive fears about the competitive imbalance in the top flight put Bayern on the defensive. "We felt as if he had to apologise for our good work," press officer Markus Hörwick told Handelszeitung. But they didn't, of course. Sporting director Matthias Sammer instead accused the opposition of "not working as if there's no tomorrow in training". His intervention wasn't well-received.

It's one thing to win but did they have to beat everyone so convincingly in the process? There was much talk of the Bundesliga turning into the Scottish Premiership, of Bayern "trying to destroy" (Dortmund CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke) all opponents and many pointed to a desolate future in which the combination of Bayern's financial might, their squad quality and Guardiola's knowhow would render the whole idea of a title race absurd for years to come.

Over the last few days, however, the lament about their invincibility has given way to admiration for their achievement. Germany manager Joachim Löw praised the team's insatiability and uncompromising attitude. "They have the mentality of unconditional success," he said, "and they have a clear idea of a playing style that they stick to consistently from the first to the last minute."

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung thought that the wide-felt "weariness of the Guardiola football" was unfounded: "It's a football that the Bundesliga has never experienced in 50 years; so delicate and precise, so playful and determined, so sophisticated and improved, so inspiring and exciting. No one has come this close to art with football in this land as Pep Guardiola."

"One has to love the magic of their passing game, their technical perfection," agreed Die Zeit. Swiss broadsheet Tages-Anzeiger gushed that "this FC Bayern has gone up another level, they have made football, German football that used to rely on very different virtues, into art; into a game full of beauty, with players who are constantly on the move and who only want one thing: the ball, always the ball, and never to give it away again."

The game at the Olympic stadium, while unspectacular and entirely predictable in its outcome, offered an instructive snapshot of the way Bayern have improved on what appeared an unimprovable last season: 82.4% of possession again marked a new best since records began 10 years ago. And there's no point in wondering whether other teams might have kept the ball better in the more distant past: no one has played that way before. Bayern passed the ball 1,078 times on Tuesday night to become the first Bundesliga team to notch up four figures. Captain Philipp Lahm, who was once again moved into midfield by Guardiola, epitomised Bayern's abnormal perfection on the ball. He played 134 passes and completed all of them.

At the final whistle, the team danced and sung in front of the away team section but the cold temperatures put paid to the traditional Weißbierdusche (beer shower). Even in jubilation, there was discipline and Guardiola spoke quietly of his "satisfaction" with winning the title, which he dedicated to Hoeness. He refused to wear the specially manufactured "24" baseball caps and watched proceedings from a distance. It was also interesting to hear the 43-year-old talk about "the four or five first months in which we had to solve many problems"; few people had noticed any.

Guardiola also warned that the next seven league games would be needed to improve on "our pace, our rhythm in every single game". This might have been the most impressive league campaign that the Bundesliga has witnessed but for Guardiola and his players, it was just the minimum target.

They have outgrown the league and must therefore find true validation abroad. It is the European history books they want – no: have – to get into, with a first successful defence of a Champions League trophy.