There are many ways to say Auf Wiedersehen.
With half of the league playing the last home match of the season, it was time to bid farewell to a couple of by now familiar Bundesliga faces. You could do it like Schalke, who turned Raul’s farewell into a big event complete with retiring his number and parading his kids through the stadium. A bit much for two years of service perhaps. Then again, a player of Raul’s calibre is not just a rare sight in the Bundesliga, but unprecedented in Schalke’s history, so one can excuse the slight overreaction. You could bid farewell to players, somewhat against their will, as Hamburg did, who weren’t willing to give Mladen Petric and David Jarolim a new contract. You can bid farewell to some of your best players, like Mönchengladbach did, and say hello to the Champions League. You can bid farewell to the other superstar, that joined the Bundesliga alongside Raul, who goes by the name Michael Ballack, and actually be happy, that this chapter in club history is over.

Markus Babbel makes the relegation battle a bit more exciting.
Cologne and Berlin were simply so incapable of anything again this weekend, that you can’t really expect much from their games against Bayern and Hoffenheim respectively otherwise. We still don’t know what really happened between Babbel and Preetz earlier this season. But we do know that Markus Babbel is still angry at Preetz. Based on recent interviews, Babbel must relish the chance to send his former employer back to the second division. How that will be reflected by the crowd in the Olympiastadion and how the two teams on the pitch will react remains to be seen. But it’s potentially the game to watch before switching over to Dortmund’s title celebration.

The oldest Bundesliga member escapes to safety.
A boring 0-0 draw with Mainz was enough for Hamburg. In fact a miserable defeat against Mainz would have been enough, because Cologne and Berlin were always going to be even more miserable. And that caps off a year that was always meant to be a season in transition. Although an unduly long relegation fight wasn’t part of that plan. Then again, whoever thinks a rejuvenated, reshuffled squad would benefit from Michael Oenning’s managerial magic, can’t complain about the latter. Looming in the summer: more rejuvenation and reshuffling, but a slightly more capable coach on the sideline.

The youngest Bundesliga member escapes to safety.
Augsburg confirmed that their first Bundesliga season wouldn’t be their last with a boring 0-0 draw with Gladbach. Different to Hamburg, that was spectacular news. The lowest budget alongside Freiburg. Just sprinkles of Bundesliga experience here and there in the squad and on the bench. A Hinrunde that appeared to confirm the general consensus: Augsburg were going to finish dead last. Halfway through the campaign though, Augsburg seemed to realise that other established Bundesliga clubs aren’t so far ahead – in fact, sometimes simply even worse. Some spirited performances and clever tactics got them some encouraging results towards the winter break. A couple of smart transfers then gave them the necessary quality. Congratulations!

Bayern’s reserve players find their groove.
There are positives to the fact, that Bayern no longer need to worry about the Bundesliga – either looking up or down. It afforded them the luxury to rest key players ahead of the clash at the Bernabeu. Now it gives Bayern the chance to experiment with formations and give bench players valuable playing time ahead of the big final between Bayern II and the Chelsea Reserves. Stuttgart possibly didn’t have enough to play for, to give Bayern’s makeshift eleven a true test, but a comfortable 2-0 victory and a clean sheet is a good result looking forward nonetheless.

Got any other insights and thoughts to share? Feel free to leave a comment.

Dortmund are deserved winners.
In a matter of eleven days, Dortmund have now beaten the second, third and fourth placed teams in the Bundesliga. Bayern and Schalke have been beaten twice in fact. Dortmund are on a record 26 match unbeaten run. They do have the chance to play the best ever season in Bundesliga history, if they win their two remaining matches. They play an entertaining brand of energetic attacking football. However, they were eliminated in the group stage of the Champions League. That was embarrassing and it also meant they had to play five (soon six) fewer matches than their immediate rivals Bayern. That’s about the last and only straw you could clutch to downplay Dortmund’s remarkable achievement. But for that, you would need to be a rather bitter Schalke or Bayern fan. So, congratulations Dortmund.

Cologne and Hertha have no such thing as a form curve.
Abject performance against Gladbach. Good performance against Stuttgart. That’s Cologne’s “form curve”. Good performance against Leverkusen. Abject performance against Kaiserslautern. That’s Hertha’s “form curve”. Good luck predicting, who’ll eventually beat the other to the relegation play-off spot. With Fortuna Düsseldorf looming in the play-offs, you might want to root for Cologne though, to enjoy a massive do or die derby.

Schalke lose a lot lately.
They lose points. They lose players on free transfers. They lose their composure in training. They lose Huntelaar in Augsburg – or rather, just leave him there stranded. They might lose their guaranteed place in the Champions League after all. Good news is, with games against Hertha and Bremen remaining, they’ll face teams who are even better at losing than Schalke.

Playing all games of the last two matchdays at the same time has more than one advantage.
It’s not just about ensuring a fair competition. It also means you won’t have the chance to watch more than one bad or boring match. As fun and exciting as this season has been, more and more teams have secured their goals for the season and the quality of the remaining matches has dropped considerably.

Late bloomers give an early glimpse of next season.
Nuremberg’s Daniel Didavi and Hamburg’s Son Heung-Min have been highly rated talents for a while, but it took them until the end of the season, to start living up to expectations. It was soon enough to be vital to both club’s Bundesliga survival. While tipped as potential breakthrough stars this season already, at least they reminded us, what we can be looking forward to next season.

A good bench is a sign of continuity.
Bayern Munich’s ambitions to beat Mainz at any cost with a make-shift squad was greatly diminished by Dortmund’s win over Schalke earlier. Hopes of a slip up didn’t materialise and the title race was effectively over. As such, this game doesn’t serve as the ultimate benchmark for the quality and depth of Bayern’s bench. But a whole season is. This season and in the past, Bayern’s performances suffered from lengthy injury spells of key players like Robben, Ribery or Schweinsteiger. Dortmund fared considerably better. Santana filled in expertly for Subotic. Lewandowski didn’t just fill in for Barrios, he far surpassed him eventually. Gündogan rose to the challenge in the absence of Bender. And then there was the small fact, that Mario Götze missed the whole second half of the season. Jürgen Klopp and Michael Zorc didn’t just do a great job building a strong first team, they also had the time to tweak and refine the bench. Bayern’s bench wasn’t tweaked and refined by Heynckes. He obviously didn’t have the chance yet. Bayern’s bench is a collection of flops and leftovers from previous seasons with different coaches. Of course, there are also a few promising youngsters and one or two experienced/aging stars, who accepted their role on the bench in return for a last big paycheck and the chance to win the odd title. But all in all, effective role-players and back ups are a key area, Bayern have to work on in the summer, if they want to reclaim the Bundesliga title from Dortmund.

The Bundesliga won’t break any attendance records next season.
Looks like up to three storied and big (at some point) clubs will get relegated. On the other end, tiny Greuther Fürth will break some foreign tongues during their Bundesliga adventure next season. I feel a bit bad for Kaiserslautern. They simply failed to replace Lakic and Ilicevic with enough quality, to keep them in the league. With the limited resources at their disposal, this is always a possibility. But then, it could hardly happen to better clubs than Cologne and/or Hertha. Both are currently the embodiment of chaotic and inept management. Relegation the logical conclusion. Unfortunately the logical conclusion to relegation is not a new better management. Often more inept management und financial doom are looming – see 1860 Munich for reference.

There should be a term for heroic goalkeeping that is ultimately in vain.
I suggest “pulling a Rensing”. Like many good goalkeepers in dysfunctional teams at dysfunctional clubs before him, Michael Rensing (again) single handedly kept the scoreline down to three instead of six+ against Gladbach. New coach Frank Schäfer talked about building on the positives from this match. That performance was pretty much it.

Bavaria will no longer be on a Bayern Munich mono diet.
Bavraria is the second most popolous state in Germany. Except for the Bayern Munich universe, there have been fairly few options for Bundesliga football in recent years, Nuremberg were constantly going up and down. 1860 Munich were constantly going down and further down. And that was it. Augsburg (the states third largest city after all) is a welcome addition to the Bavarian Bundesliga landscape. And with a good chance, that their first ever Bundesliga season will miracously be followed by a second, the club can start building some long term momentum. And for the cuteness factor, with the not so cute name, Greuther Fürth will help bump the number of Bavarian derbies to record levels – which will include Germany’s oldest derby between Fürth and Nuremberg.

European ambitions paired against relegation fears makes for great entertainment.
The best football to watch this weekend took place between clubs on the European places and the ones, threatening to send you to more provincial places in Germany. No nervy defensive battles but rather the need on both sides to go for all three points. In case of Hertha and Leverkusen, that was only enough for one point each but coupled with three goals on both sides. An encouraging lifesign from Hertha, who have a decent chance to push Cologne from the relegation play off spot.

More thoughts? Feel free to share them in the comments below.

The title hasn’t been decided yet, but the near future.
Dortmund have apparently been handed the title already by pretty much everybody, who has anything to say about football. And both based on their performance and plain statistics – no team has ever given up a six point lead with four matches to go – it indeed is likely they’ll retain the title. But I wouldn’t quite rule out a minor miracle yet. Schalke have been inconsistent recently, but have shown on many occassions what they are capable of, and they should be extra motivated to do so at home against Dortmund this weekend. Gladbach have been out of form for the past few weeks, but remain very difficult to break down and still have the ability to kill a game with one counter attack. As long as Dortmund haven’t taken these two hurdles, I wouldn’t proclaim Bayern’s triple dream dead quite yet. But this game nonetheless was confirmation of what many already believed to be the case independent from which club will win the title this season. Dortmund won’t just be Bayern’s main challenger in the next few years. They are on equal footing. Not in economic terms. That would take at least a decade. Not in terms of overall fanbase. That would take a few years as well. But on the pitch, where it matters most. Having two big teams in the league is certainly much better, than the recent years of Bayern hegemony. But a duopoly gets boring rather quickly as well. I hope there are more teams who can follow Dortmund’s blue print for success, and thus help keep the league unpredictable – just on a higher level of football.

Arjen Robben had a particularly bad hair day.
You wouldn’t believe that to be possible. After single-handedly winning Bayern numerous big games in both the Champions League and Bundesliga, he pulled off an impressive hat-trick of misfortune. He played Lewandowski onside. He missed a penalty. And he had the chance to make amends with an absolute sitter he then hit high over the cross bar. Depending on how the title race pans out, it’ll go down as one of the most fondly remembered performances of a single player in Dortmund history. With a bit of luck, Bayern fans can look forward to him making amends with a special performance against Real Madrid.

White people throwing bananas at white people is confusing.
That is, if you are not from Germany and new to the Bundesliga. Which makes it the majority of people on this planet. After all, this action shares eerie similarities to a common form of racism at football stadiums. But there are two plausible explanations for Manuel Neuer’s banana shower. I favor the first, but find the second more interesting. Prior to Neuer, it had been an exclusive “privilege” of Oliver Kahn to be showered with Bananas during away games, due to his perceived similarities to a gorilla. In its’ own twisted way, it was an acknowledging gesture by the Dortmund fans. They now accept Manuel Neuer as heir to Oliver Kahn’s throne. Another theory would reduce this to a simple pun. The Bundesliga shield you get when winning the league is referred to as Schale (bowl). The German word for peel also happens to be Schale. A common chant by Dortmund fans towards Schalke fans goes like “No hands on the Schale in your lifetime” referring to Schalke’s inability to win the championship for over 50 years. So, a banana peel is the only Schale former Schalke man Neuer will ever get his hands on… Feel free to invent other plausible explanations and post them in the comments.

Dortmund’s energy and enthusiasm can have its’ downsides.
At this point we are still marvelling at their high energy all out football and enjoy Klopp’s all dancing, singing and fist-pumping sideline antics. Once the novelty wears off in the coming years, we’ll have to look a bit more critical at potential side effects of this way of celebrating football. Kevin Grosskreutz already got in the news with some unneccessary post match provocations against former Schalke player Gerald Asamoah in the DFB Pokal. Now, Neven Subotic had to vent his anger at a dejected Arjen Robben, as he wrongly believed Robben to have dived. If that develops from isolated cases into a habbit it’ll quickly cost them sympathy points with the neutral fans.

Sacking Stale Solbakken was long overdue.
Simply to finally complete the chaotic mess Cologne are in. No president, no sporting director, no coach, (soon) no Podolski. Hennes being pretty much the last billy goat standing. Yet another desolate performance and four more goals for the league’s worst defense against Mainz was eventually enough, to call it quits on Solbakken’s ambitious – and with the benefit of hindsight naive and unbalanced – tactical system. The man who takes charge for the last four games is Frank Schäfer, who not too long ago, resigned himself after a series of desolate performances. Sounds about right. In theory, this power vacuum is a great chance to completely revamp the club’s structure and put all the right people in charge. In reality, who in his right mind is willing to risk his reputation at such a club? Often, that would be all the wrong people.

Feel free to add you own thoughts and comments below.

The new rivalry between Bayern and Dortmund needs a name.
Klassiko, Derby Germania, something like that. What looks like to be the biggest game in German football for the foreseeable future surely deserves a name. So, any suggestions? In the meantime we’ll have to let their slogans clash: Bayern’s mia san mia vs Dortmund’s we are football. Everything is set up for a fantastic title showdown on Wednesday. And while it may turn out to be a borefest with either Dortmund or Bayern sneaking out a win or both drawing, it’ll give us plenty to discuss. What does or doesn’t it mean for the current and future hierarchy in the Bundesliga? These things. See you Wednesday evening.

Raul needs to sign a new contract.
Preferably from Schalke and not from an oil-rich Quatar based club of course. I’m all for Schalke’s recent forays into financial responsibility and wage bill cuts, but I’m also for seeing more of Raul’s mastery of the beautiful game every weekend. Time for Horst Heldt to find a compromise. Maybe there are still some Magath signings hidden in some abandoned locker on Schalke’s training ground, that can be sold at some garage sale, to finance the deal?

In Cologne it’s nature vs nurture and nature wins.
Chronic chaos has been in Cologne’s DNA for decades now. At the beginning of the season Volker Finke and Stale Solbakken set out to prove nature wrong, and inject a cool headed professional approach into the club’s culture. The long term goal: develop the club into a contender for the European places. The short term result: the president resigned. Sporting director Finke was fired. The team is in the middle of another relegation battle. Coach Solbakken just about held on to his job. Yet, his team’s precious signs of improvement against Bremen at the weekend, were immediately overshadowed by (another) episode of a player having a little bit too much to drink and getting in trouble with the police…

Reports of Kaiserslautern’s demise have been greatly accurate.
Much more accurate than their finishing, which is letting them all the way down to Tasmania Berlin dimensions. A measly 18 goals in 29 matches could probably only earn you points with a Lucien Favre trained defense. Summer signings Sukuta-Pasu, Wagner or Shechter, on paper, could all be labeled promising talents. Unfortunately for sporting director Stefan Kuntz, not one of them managed to deliver on the promise.

If you miss the old Werder Bremen gung-ho football, consider enyoing some of Stuttgart’s recent disregard for defense.
While Bremen are in a bit of an identity crisis, Stuttgart have been scoring and conceding their way up to fifth place. They could have lost against Dortmund by eight goals to four, and they could have drawn against Mainz 4-4, so they are riding their luck and depending on their opponents inefficiency a bit. But they are scoring lots of goals in the process and are fun to watch. Not sure where Labaddia is going with this in the long term, but in the short term, it looks like returning the club to Europe.

On August 24th, 1963, 17 minutes into the first matchday of the inaugural Bundesliga season, 1860 Munich striker Rudolf Brunnenmeier nutmegged Eintracht Braunschweig keeper Hans Jäcker to give his side a 1-0 lead. It was 1860 Munich’s first ever Bundesliga goal. It was the first Bundesliga goal that was caught on camera. But it was only the second goal in Bundesliga history.

That historic first goal was scored by Borussia Dortmund striker Friedhelm “Timo” Konietzka, just 58 seconds into his side’s game against Werder Bremen. But as Konietzka recalled, it wasn’t recorded on film:

“You didn’t have cameras in all the stadiums back then, and as we were at Bremen all the photographers had positioned themselves behind our goal.”

Which isn’t 100% accurate. There were film cameras, but they weren’t ready in time for Konietzka’s early goal. Just some second half footage of that game was recorded for the highlights show in the evening. Nitpicky detail, though.

Timo Konietzka, aged 73, passed away this Tuesday, following a lengthy batte with incurable cancer of the gallbladder. So we’ll have to make do remembering his contribution to Bundesliga history without grainy b/w footage and instant replay.

Farewell Timo Konietzka.

In Cologne sparks fly on and off the pitch. On the pitch we could witness all the thrills of a proper relegation battle between Cologne and Berlin. Intense football. Intense atmosphere. Some controversial refereeing. Just about the right result for the billy goats. Lukas Podolski got his first red card in the Bundesliga, unjustly so, meaning there’s not much left to check off on his Bundesliga to-do list, before joining Arsenal. A move, that will hand Cologne a bit of money to build a new, less one-sided team. A move, that eventually escalated brewing conflicts between sporting director Volker Finke and coach Stale Solbakken, and possibly Lukas Podolski and quite a few other Cologne personnel. Whether that makes Finke the easy to pinpoint bad guy in the story is hard to say. He wasn’t quite the team player for sure though, as the questionable signing of Chong Tese, without consulting Solbakken, demonstrated. And if I had to choose between Finke and Solbakken, I’d always side with the Norwegian. A coach that deserves a professional management structure and a cooperative and competent sporting director. Whether he can really get that at a carnival club like Cologne, remains to be seen.

Hamburg are too dumb for the Europa League. I like the young team Frank Arnesen is assembling. Thorsten Fink’s tactics have yet to stand the long term Bundesliga test, but he is a very promising coach overall. I had some hopes, that a Rückrunde push for the Europa League could speed up the development of this team. That looks more than unlikely now. Hamburg are probably the team that suffers the most from individual errors, black outs and plain stupidity. This includes two questionable penalties against Stuttgart and Schalke, where Hamburg players happily invited players to draw the foul and win a soft penalty. The game against Schalke on Sunday was well played to the extent that Huub Stevens declared Hamburg the better team, but inefficiency at the top and the usual easy mistakes at the back, turned it into an easy Schalke win. Too bad, as their run-in, on paper, would have had some top third of the table finish potential.

Forget what I wrote about Leverkusen. That thing about Leverkusen going into the right direction. About Dutt settling in. After falling apart against Barcelona, and gladly blaming it all on a certain Lionel Messi, they defended just as naively against Magath’s marginally less talented Wolfsburg side. Michael Ballack put himself back in the headlines, with an appearance on a German football talkshow. The Champions League places are out of reach again. Everything back to normal at Leverkusen.

Augsburg can teach the rest of the league something about realistic ambitions and patience. Maybe it’s simply the luxury of nobody expecting anything more than dead last from Augsburg. But the Bundesliga newbies are doing a lot of things right at the moment. They didn’t take any risks or overspent on the transfer market. They didn’t heave unrealistic expectations on Jos Luhukay’s shoulders. In fact the management declared, he could just as well lose all 34 games and still be Augsburg, at the beginning of the season. And while all this added up to one of the two direct relegation spots for most of the Hinrunde, the team has now visibly adapted to the rough environments of Germany’s top league. It’ll still be a long hard fight to stay up, but it’ll be far less, than the foregone conclusion people predicted ahead of the season.

Gladbach lost, Bayern kept and Schalke still look for their rhythm. For the title race to become a bit more exciting, Dortmund’s rivals will need to fix their problems first though. Without an adequate replacement for Patrick Herrmann, Lucien Favre opted to rearrange his front line and bring in Igor de Camargo. Something that has completely taken the bite out of Gladbach’s attack and cost the club points for the past two weeks. Bayern basically play the same way, they do all year. But since that is utterly predictable, particularly away from home, it won’t win them any trophies this season. Schalke, it seems, never really found a rhythm to begin with, and keep alternating between confident thrashings by and for them.

The relegation zone is open to new applicants. Performances and results have been promising for all bottom teams except Kaiserslautern. Augsburg and Freiburg in particular are ready to do all they can to defy the odds. Hertha, aka the Ottoman Empire, have stopped their downward trend too. At least potentially this could yet drag another mid table team into the relegation mix. Given the somewhat predetermined situation at the top, that’s good news for the suspense driven Bundesliga fan.

Robin Dutt and Leverkusen are slowly but surely getting along. For a usually small and quiet club like Bayer Leverkusen, the Hinrunde was more Bayern-like than Bayer-like: Endless discussions on/off the pitch, in the media, through agents and via all sorts of club officials surrounding one or two big egos sitting on the bench or in the stands. That’s more akin to FC Hollywood than the unassuming Werkself. Yet, since the Ballack situation has been “resolved”, Robin Dutt has slowly but surely managed to teach his team some winning football. And when you beat Bayern for the first time in 14 attempts, it’s more than just a fluke. Schalke’s indifferent form has meanwhile helped Leverkusen move within four points of the Champions League places and momentum is certainly on Bayer’s side.

Bruno Labbadia works on overcoming his Rückrunde Hoodoo. Bruno Labbadia’s coaching career can be summarized as follows: promising up to exciting football in the Hinrunde, a series of injuries in the winter, disappointing Rückrunde, dressing room rifts, getting sacked. At Stuttgart he is now trying to mix all these aspects a bit more. A so-so first half of the season is currently followed by a promising spell of second half of the season football and a flirt with the Europa League places. If he keeps balancing the highs and lows, Labbadia might even delay the inevitable sack longer than usual.

Borussia Mönchengladbach play some decent football for a side that got nearly relegated less than a year ago. That’s why I’ve dedicated a whole post to them already.

Lukas Podolski and Hamburg start flirting with European football. Lukas Podolski does so in interviews. Hamburg do so on the pitch. Werder Bremen and Bayer Leverkusen, and as such the Europa League spots, are there for the taking. Yet, Cologne were so uninspired and one dimensional on Sunday, that they look likely to disappear somewhere in the grey muddy middle of the table this season. Which in turn means, Podolski might have to look elsewhere for regular European football during the upcoming primetime of his career. Meanwhile, a win over Bremen in the northern derby next weekend, and Hamburg will be right back in the hunt for the European places. And different to last season, they do have the right coach to get them there.

There is a one in three chance, that a bottom of the table clash turns into an entertaining goal fest extravaganza. Which also means, there is a two in three chance, it’s going to be a snooze fest. Those fortunate enough to give the unsexy Friday match-up between Wolfsburg and Freiburg a chance, were rewarded with a five-goal thriller and some questionable offside calls, to add a bit of controversy. Those who looked to cap off the weekend with some nice Bundesliga football on Sunday, were left bitterly disappointed. Two completely forgettable bottom of the table encounters, at least allowed you, to let your mind wander and dream of all the beautiful football Borussia Mönchengladbach is yet going to play this season.

Michael Preetz is starting to make Dieter Hoeness look like a decent manager. And that’s good news for Dieter Hoeness only. At least Preetz was quick to admit that signing Skibbe was the wrong decision in the first place, following Hertha’s utterly complete meltdown at Stuttgart on Saturday. If there is any logic to how Preetz hires new coaches, there is a small chance it’ll be someone decent. He so far had the habit of replacing smart coaches with uninspired ones and vice versa. Of course, there is also a name like Thomas Doll making the rounds in Berlin, which for me would be a clear indicator that Preetz’ stint as Hertha sporting director is likely going to end this summer.

Impressions are still fresh, which makes it easier to indulge in hyperbole, but during the first 45 minutes against Schalke, Gladbach delivered some of the finest team football the Bundesliga has seen this season. On top, there was a goal for every personal preference in football artistry anyone could have: a great individual goal by Marco Reus, an even greater team goal finished off by Mike Hanke and a beautiful goal from a free kick by Juan Arango.

The second half was rather anti-climactic, as Gladbach took a well deserved rest, following a stressful 120 minute midweek DFB-Pokal fight, while Schalke had long given up on the idea, that they could turn the match around against this particular Gladbach side.

Gladbach’s record against the top three teams now is as follows: vs Bayern (2 wins), vs Schalke (2 wins, 1 loss) and vs Dortmund (1 draw). That’s certainly good enough of a stat to promote them to serious title contenders. Yet, doubts remain over their ability to grind out all the necessary three points against bottom of the table sides.

But, while still a dark horse, Gladbach should be, for every non Schalke, Bayern and Dortmund fan, the team to love, watch and root for in the title race this season. When they turn on the style, there is no better team to watch in the league at the moment.