The women’s Bundesliga will start again on Friday evening. Excitement guaranteed. The title race: still open. The battle for third place: still open. The relegation battle: still open.
The Munich women around Sydney Lohmann (left) are ahead in the title race (right: Lena Goeßling from VfL).
imago images
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Title race: will Bayern replace series champions Wolfsburg?
After the winter break, with a view to the championship, the opposite is the case – a duel between FC Bayern and VfL Wolfsburg, who recently won four championships in a row. Since the 2017/18 season, Wolfsburg have been leaders in the remaining ten games – even unbeaten the last two seasons – FC Bayern are now at the top. Flawless. Twelve games, twelve wins, 40: 1 goals. “Of course we want to overtake Wolfsburg – that is our vision,” FCB coach Jens Scheuer said in kicker before the season. The vision received a lot of nourishment. The she-wolfs must make up five points in the remaining games.
Third place – the international ticket
The championship is no longer within reach for TSG Hoffenheim around striker Nicole Billa, who leads the league’s top scorer list with 14 goals, eleven points behind Bayern are probably too much. But third place, which the Kraichgau women took last season, is also the declared goal in 2020/21. Especially since the third is also entitled to participate in the Champions League for the first time.
But TSG feels the former champion Turbine Potsdam in the neck above all. Only three points separate Potsdam from Hoffenheim, and the turbines still have a game up their sleeve. However, the start on Friday evening is crisp: It goes to Wolfsburg. And Potsdam has to “do a cold start”, as assistant coach Dirk Heinrichs explains, there were no preparatory games. “Our goal must still be to keep Wolfsburg away from our goal with a lot of courage and aggressiveness in order to put a few pinpricks ourselves.”
Pinpricks also want to set Leverkusen (five points behind third place) and Frankfurt (seven points). Eintracht, the successor to the seven-time champions 1. FFC Frankfurt, will have a hard time getting an international place.
The narrow midfield
Freiburg and Essen, however, are unlikely to play a major role either upwards or downwards
The relegation battle: revolt of the newbies
In recent years, many of the newcomers had to dedicate themselves to the second division again, Cologne and Jena both even said goodbye to the German upper house in 2019/20. Werder Bremen and SV Meppen oppose this. “We are definitely the number one relegation candidate,” said Maria Reisinger, Sports Director at SVM, before the season in kicker, but with one win and three draws Meppen is above the line. Like Bremen, which has nine points.
The bottom line: Will Sand and Duisburg be caught?
Will it hit SC Sand, which has been an integral part of the Bundesliga since 2014 and in 2016 and 2017 in the DFB Cup finals (failed twice at Wolfsburg)? Things are bad for Duisburg, the last place without a win. “The support from the entire MSV is missing,” says ex-national player Verena Schweers in the kicker column.
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