Frankfurt / Main (dpa) – Yawn … FC Bayern again. That’s almost all of the championship tips before the start of the second half of the season, of course. The alpha animal greets you every day. A title triumph for the tenth time in a row, at least that would be new!
With the Munich team nine points ahead of Borussia Dortmund, everything looks like a boredom league. And yet the second half of the season, which begins on Friday, holds a lot of entertainment potential.
Effects of the Omikron variant not foreseeable
League boredom? All clubs and those in charge tremble before game cancellations and – in the worst case – before an interruption of the entire operation. Corona also overshadows everything in German professional football in the fifth half series in a row. Here, too, the effects of the Omikron variant cannot be foreseen. After the short winter break, there are more and more cases in the teams. Particularly affected: defending champion FC Bayern. Added to this are the financial losses for the clubs, ghost games are being played again almost everywhere. As long as a club can provide 15 eligible players (including a goalkeeper), according to the German Football League, there is no reason for a game to be canceled. Donata Hopfen, the new head of the DFL as the successor to Christian Seifert, immediately joins as a crisis manager.
Will Freiburg make it into the Champions League?
League boredom? Life is raging behind Bayern too. Practically every football fan enjoys the passion and enthusiasm of the surprise third SC Freiburg. Will cult coach Christian Streich’s team really make it into the Champions League for the first time? And: Can FSV Mainz 05, which is actually always one of the relegation candidates and does a great job off the big stage, stay in the upper half of the table? And: Will newcomers VfL Bochum take their momentum into the second half of the season under Thomas Reis?
Schadenfreude is also part of it
League boredom? Schadenfreude is also part of it. When the little loved title candidate RB Leipzig crashed – only six wins in the first 17 games – many fans of traditional football in particular have fun. The ups and downs of the would-be big city club Hertha BSC also occupy the experts far beyond the capital. Now the new coaches Domenico Tedesco (Leipzig) and Tayfun Korkut (Hertha) are supposed to get the two clubs out of the crisis.
Radiance of the super striker
League boredom? It’s showtime! Types like Dortmund’s super striker Erling Haaland or Bayern’s goal machine Robert Lewandowski ensure radiance – and excitement: Will Haaland stay? Will Lewandowski set further records? And then there would be Joshua Kimmich: How will his return as a purified vaccine procrastinator?
Cut-throat competition in the second half of the season
League boredom? In the battle for the Europa League and Champions League places, an outsider like Union Berlin suddenly has a good chance again. After 17 match days, the team of coach Urs Fischer with the seventh place occupies exactly the position that was enough to move into international business last season. In the displacement competition in the second half of the season, the weaker ones from RB Leipzig, Borussia Mönchengladbach and VfL Wolfsburg also want to get involved. Gladbach has to live with the fact that Matthias Ginter and Denis Zakaria are leaving at the end of the season. “We don’t fall into shock and that’s why it won’t knock the club out of its foundations,” promises sports director Max Eberl.
Partying is never boring
League boredom? Especially not for FC Bayern. When does partying become monotonous? A historic decade of champions and the premiere title for star coach Julian Nagelsmann (34) beckons. 56 goals after 17 games – the 101-goal record of the golden Bayern generation around “Bomber” Müller from the 1971/72 season could also fall in 2022. On Friday (8.30 p.m. / Sat1 and DAZN) the record champions open the second half of the season against Borussia Mönchengladbach.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 220104-99-584161 / 4
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