Frankfurt / Main (dpa) – Two things have been certain in the Bundesliga in recent years: FC Bayern will be champion and Robert Lewandowski will be top scorer. At least one series will end after the departure of the Polish world footballer to FC Barcelona.
That’s hardly any consolation for the rest. Because the league is groaning under the extreme dominance of the Munich team, even Bayern boss Oliver Kahn is worried about the attractiveness of the Bundesliga before the start of the 2022/23 World Cup season. “We don’t want to hear from England that we in Germany are a kind of ‘Farmers League’,” said Kahn in an interview in the “11Freunde Bundesliga special”.
Lewandowski and Haaland gone, new stars there
Even without the goalkeepers Lewandowski and Erling Haaland (Manchester City) who have migrated away, the Bundesliga should remain exciting – and, if many fans want it, it should become more exciting again at the top. How difficult that will be is shown by the Munich transfer summer, who responded to a Lewandowski departure by signing two world-class players in defender Matthijs de Ligt and striker Sadio Mané.
«We brought two absolute top stars from Europe. Of course we would like the Bundesliga to have more people like that,” said Bayern President Herbert Hainer. Rather jokingly, but with a true core, the official added: “Of course, it must not be too much so that we are still first at the end of the season.” If Dortmund commits top quality in Niklas Süle, Nico Schlotterbeck and Karim Adeyemi, the series champion from Munich just grabs a shelf higher.
Eintracht Frankfurt in the Champions League
An additional pound for the makers at the German Football League (DFL) is to provide a European Cup winner for the first time in 25 years who is not named FC Bayern. Eintracht Frankfurt crowned a furious Europa League season in Seville in May and is now allowed to play in the premier class. On August 5 (8:30 p.m.), the Bundesliga will offer almost everything you can look forward to this season at the long-awaited start: harmony with former World Cup hero Mario Götze against Bayern with Mané, de Ligt and the many established stars around Thomas Mueller, Joshua Kimmich and Manuel Neuer.
Internationally, a diffuse picture emerged recently. If the other greats Bayern (to Villarreal) and Dortmund (first to Sporting Lisbon, later to Glasgow Rangers) surprisingly failed, it was the Frankfurt team who provided football festivities in Barcelona or London. “It’s good for German football. I am sure that we will continue to be internationally competitive. We’ll see if it’s enough for more titles, »said Hertha BSC’s Fredi Bobic. He calls his ex-club’s triumph “an exclamation mark”.
The title also leads to five premier class starters, with the quartet sounding like the usual suspects alongside Frankfurt with Bayern, Dortmund, RB Leipzig and Bayer Leverkusen. “There is always talk of the closed shop. With Eintracht Frankfurt, the seventh club in the Bundesliga has qualified for the Champions League in the past three years,” said BVB boss Hans-Joachim Watzke. However, Bayern, Dortmund and Leipzig were there in all three years, only behind them did the line-up change.
Union, Freiburg and Cologne in Europe
The fact that the Premier League is always praised goes too far for Watzke. It is a bit modern to proclaim the English league as the best in the world. “But they haven’t won a single competition this year. Champions League to Spain, Europa League to Germany. Conference League to Italy,” recalled the 63-year-old, who is also the head of the DFL supervisory board. In addition to Frankfurt, Real Madrid and AS Roma secured the international cups.
The German performance in the Europa and Conference League should also be exciting this season. In 2019 (reaching the semi-finals) and now in 2022, Eintracht demonstrated the opportunities that club competitions below the Champions League can offer. This time – in contrast to the premier class – not old acquaintances are at the start, but rather Union Berlin and SC Freiburg in the Europa League and 1. FC Köln in the playoffs of the Conference League.
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