It’s Bayern Munich, despite Mainz and Freiburg, unexpected troublers of the European places, deserving praise for their stratospheric improvement from 2023-24. TheRekordmeisteris rarely more provoked than when presented with serious opposition, and Xabi Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen had done just that with last term’s domestically unbeaten double-winning exploits. Leverkusen were still excellent but could simply not match Bayern’s pace in the end. They played with dazzle but Vincent Kompany also did the one thing that was beyond Julian Nagelsmann and Thomas Tuchel in beginning to sort out Bayern’s leaky defence, conceding their lowest total in the Bundesliga (32) since Hansi Flick’s treble-winning season of 2019-20. He also made them competitive in the Champions League, in which they wereunlucky to lose to Inter.
There can be reasonable shouts for Bayern’s Michael Olise in a stellar firstBundesligaseason, his teammates Harry Kane and Jamal Musiala, Mainz’s Jonathan Burkhardt (whose brilliant season propelled him into the Germany side), Serhou Guirassy in continuing to score consistently domestically and continentally for Borussia Dortmund as their season fell apart – all while acknowledging that it probably would have been Omar Marmoush had he not left Eintracht Frankfurt for Manchester City in January.
The prize, though, goes to Patrik Schick, a player whose body has consistently rebelled against his elite talent but who was Leverkusen’s motor through much of a season when few thought he would be a key player. Schick scored 21 Bundesliga goals despite starting only 19 matches (albeit with 12 substitute appearances tacked on) and they were, as per his varied palette, goals of all sorts, with left, right and head. As with last season, he had his share of clutch moments, notably the stoppage-time winner in the comeback victory at Stuttgart in March, as well as a brace in the win at Dortmund. It was a delight to see him at his best again.
While Kompany’s first season worked well and Bo Henriksen transformed Mainz, there can only be one choice: Freiburg’s Julian Schuster began the campaign with an impossible job in succeeding Christian Streich – the Bundesliga’s longest-serving coach, club legend after almost three decades of continuous service, perpetual overachiever and beloved philosopher – when stepping into his first head coaching role. He missed out on Champions League qualification on the final day but returned the Black Forest club to the Europa League with 13 points more won than in the previous season; a remarkable achievement.
Schuster was modest about his efforts, handing Streich much of the credit after that final-day loss to Eintracht Frankfurt. “What I was able to learn from Christian is still deeply embedded in me,” he said, “and without him I wouldn’t be sitting here.” The club’s chief financial officer, Oliver Leki, spoke for many when he said Schuster “was already a bit of a coach as a player” and while the club deserves credit for having plotted the succession plan so well, the rave reviews Schuster gets from his players says all that needs to be said.
Get ready to catcall; the Leverkusen-Bayern goalless draw in February stands out. It was the game that the title race hinged on, with Florian Wirtz’s incredible miss in stoppage time allowing Bayern to escape with a draw and to have the breathing space that defined the rest of the title race. It had been an exhilarating match (despite the lack of goals), run by Wirtz, dominated by Leverkusen from start to finish and a testament to their remarkably high standards when a significant drop-off from their historic double-winning season would have been understandable.
If goals are more your thing (which is forgivable) then Holstein Kiel’s 4-3 win over Borussia Mönchengladbach – their 4-2 win over Dortmund in January was in with a shout as well – in which they lost a two-goal lead and a 3-2 lead before the excellent Shuto Machino hit the winner in stoppage time, was thrilling. Kiel were one of the high points of the season, top-flight first-timers and heavy favourites to be relegated before a ball was kicked yet competitive for most of the campaign and the Michael Myers of the Bundesliga season who kept coming back even when it looked as if they were done, until the drop was confirmed in their penultimate game.
Here comes our first bit of rule-bending. Olise’s solo goal against Shakhtar is not a Bundesliga goal, having come in the Champions League, even if it was scored by a Bundesliga team on a 2.Bundesliga ground (with the Ukrainian club playing this season’s European games at Schalke) but it demands mention, with the France international gliding through a host of defenders before sitting the goalkeeper down and stroking the ball home. If we want to be more strict, let’s go back to the first goal of the Bundesliga season because there is nothing quite like a Granit Xhaka piledriver from range, this one coming against his former club Mönchengladbach.
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Arminia Bielefeld had a Rolodex of them. While winning the 3.Liga Michél Kniat’s team knocked out four Bundesliga sideson their way to the DFB Pokal finalin Berlin – most notably Leverkusen, who were unbelievably denied the season consolation prize of retaining the cup by Maximilian Grosser’s back-post volley on an unbelievable April night in the semi-finals. Arminia couldn’t quite get it done against Stuttgart in the final (though they did hit the woodwork at 0-0 before the Swabians took control) but it has still been a historic season for the club.
Dortmund’s rally from 10 points behind the top four with eight games left to snatching a Champions League place on the final day was special (Lars Ricken dizzily claimed Niko Kovac’s work was “one of the greatest coaching achievements in the history of BVB”), but the return of Friedhelm Funkel was even more out of leftfield. The 71-year-old stepped back into the FC Köln head coach’s position with two games of the second-tier season left and Effzeh wobbling within sight of the finishing line, which led to the dramatic double sacking of coach Gerhard Struber and sporting director Christian Keller. They won the last two, clinched the 2.Bundesliga title and with the party clear-up still ongoing Funkel was off again, seemingly piqued that the board were hesitating over offering him the permanent position for next season. It was fun anyway, totally in keeping with the mania of the club – and Funkel made €250,000 for his brief intervention of a third spell there.
“It did not reflect my personal wishes,” was the phrase that stood out from Thomas Müller’s farewell statement to Bayern, with a frank parallel to Kevin De Bruyne’s Manchester City exit, for example, but any awkwardness didn’t last long, with Müller posing with the club management to smilingly announce his “extension” for the Club World Cup.
Bochum, sadly, didn’t enjoy such a respectful send-off as they finished bottom, despite some mid-season hope. “He gives us something and you simply believe everything he says,” Gerrit Holtmann said of their newly minted coach Dieter Hecking back in November. “If he told me that I would play for Real Madrid, I would believe him.”
David Raum saying he wanted Leipzig to play “scumbag football” to get themselves back up the table was also a laudable sentiment, though in the end they weren’t quite scummy enough, missing out on the European places for the first time since their 2016 promotion.