New Bundesliga season gets underway
Germany’s 53rd football league season begins this weekend.
One subject in particular is preoccupying fans and experts alike in the run-up to this weekend’s kick-off: how will FC Bayern fare without its key player, the mid-field strategist and world champion Bastian Schweinsteiger, now that he has transferred to Manchester United? Will the Munich club again attain league champion status at an early stage, as it did last season? Or has it in fact sold its soul along with its star player, an athlete who had come to personify FC Bayern? A number of clubs are quietly hopeful that they might now be in with a chance.
Which will be the underdog nobody reckoned with?
VFL Wolfsburg, a team which was always hot on the heels of its Munich rivals last year, has kept superstar Kevin De Bruyne and even strengthened its squad by acquiring centre forward Max Kruse. Borussia Dortmund also plans to fight for a top spot again with its ambitious new trainer Thomas Tuchel, while Borussia Mönchengladbach is tipped for success among those in the know. Schalke 04 and Bayer Leverkusen are seen as having an outside chance – plus, as is the case nearly every year, there is likely to be one surprise underdog which breaks into the phalanx of top teams.
For some years, the Bundesliga has experienced one particular phenomenon in the usual round of promotions and demotions – more and more provincial sides like Fürth and Paderborn, or more recently Ingolstadt and Darmstadt, are coming to the fore. Darmstadt is one particularly interesting case in point: two years ago the club was nearly demoted to the fourth division, surviving only by the skin of its teeth because another club went bankrupt. It then achieved two surprise promotions, and now the “team of the nameless” plans to make life difficult for its more established rivals by dint of its sheer enthusiasm and team spirit.
