One weekend of football can show you plenty but there’s little to take serious conclusions from.
Still, that can’t stop us having some fun with some talking points.
And as we’re all here, please subscribe if you haven’t or recommend to people who you think would like the newsletter if you have. Everyone who reads is greatly appreciated and gives me the motivation to keep going as the season progresses!
The real Bundesliga is back!
Sure, the league returned, but it returned to full stadiums. Full of sound, full of colour, full of hope.
Watching German football is so special precisely because of the fans and the status they hold throughout the country. and it was a pleasure to see them back where they belong.
Unfortunately for Kevin Trapp and Frankfurt, some fan involvement from behind the goal served to hinder the hosts if anything as they conceded early on against Bayern.
This newsletter will hopefully talk about off-field ongoing as much as on-field ongoing this season. And we might as well start there quickly …
The police still treat fans like criminals
The season, the first starting with full stadiums since 2019, was one game old when the first police controversy of the campaign struck.
Werder Bremen’s Ultras arrived in Wolfsburg and turned back before the game after police took measures to hold travelling fans at the station, searched them “intensively”, and asked fans to identify themselves, even though there is no rivalry between the two clubs and both clubs told police the match is not worthy of heavy or strict policing.
Why do travelling football fans in particular (and football fans in general) have to put up with presumed guilt?
“Crimes are being prevented before they happen,” an officer told friend of the newsletter Helge Wohltmann.
Another season and one of German football’s biggest issues rears its ugly head immediately.
New Bayern, new BVB
OK, now for some football talk and things to look out for in the weeks to come.
Let’s start with Bayern, who have, in recent years, been a team defined by having a 40-goal striker who wins them games. Now they’re a team playing a strikerless front four.
‘Strikers’ Sadio Mané and Serge Gnabry drag the defence wide and threaten in behind. Two number 10s - Jamal Musiala and Thomas Müller - explore the spaces that creates. Musiala in particular looks made for his role, popping off short passes when he must but otherwise receiving the ball on the turn and driving into space or looking for a quick pass behind the defence whenever possible.
Teams can’t play a back five against this system, it just dominates centrally and the wingbacks are made redundant. Frankfurt found this out the hard way.
For more on the Bayern setup, I’d highly recommend this threat from Jon Mackenzie:
And on to Dortmund, who have also undergone huge change this summer.
Their gritty (and perhaps slightly fortunate) 1-0 win over Bayer Leverkusen was a good result and didn’t teach us too much about either side tactically but it did show us that Dortmund are going to be very different proposition defensively this season.
Speaking to Sky in the build up, new boss Edin Terzić essentially said it’s fine if teams finish above BVB this season but he will not accept it if they finish above them because they were hungrier and more aggressive.
For a team this talented, that’s a pretty good baseline. And you could see the message has got through. Jude Bellingham was everywhere but that shouldn’t surprise, he always is.
More surprising was a last-ditch sliding tackle from Mo Dahoud to prevent a certain goal and even more eye-catching was new boy Nico Schlotterbeck celebrating every won ball or every decision from the officials that went his way. For the first time in a long time, nobody will be able to credibly accuse BVB of dropping points because they didn’t want it enough.
Same strugglers
Freiburg, Union Berlin, Köln are all in Europe this season. Mainz narrowly missed out.
The Bundesliga’s best-of-the-rest quartet from 2021/22 faced Augsburg, Hertha BSC, Schalke, and Bochum respectively this weekend, the four teams most widely predicted to be relegated this season.
Let’s just say, even if they had tricky games, there was absolutely no reason for anyone to reconsider those predictions after all four sides lost, barely landing a punch between them.
That’s all for today, hopefully it serves a nice quick overview of the opening weekend, and there will be plenty more as the season goes on.
If you’ve any requests for things to focus on, well, you know where the comments are!
Lewis, I dig the newsletter (and your Arseblog work) and am hoping to get more into the Bundesliga this year. I like the match day recaps and deep dives into what’s happening at the different clubs, for both on and off field activities. Also, are you a part of, or would you recommend, any Bundesliga focused podcasts? Cheers!