Bayern Munich won the Bundesliga once again and for the seventh year in a row.
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Information for Bundesliga Fans in the US:
FOX Sporst will keep broadcasting the Bundesliga and here are some important links.
Fox Sports Bundesliga
Bundesliga.com
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This year Bayern had to fend off Borussia Dortmund until the final game of the season and were able to make up a nine point deficit during the second half of the season.
Dortmund, on the other hand, blew a huge chance to win the title thanks an inconsistent second half of the season were they dropped points way to easily.
Given that winning the league alone is pretty boring, Bayern also won the cup, winning it's 12th double of their history, and sending off Arjen Robben and Frank Ribery with two more titles to their name.
Alongside Bayern and Dortmund, Leipzig and Leverkusen made it into the top four to qualify for next the group stages of the UEFA Champions League.
Borussia Mönchengladbach, VfL Wolfsburg and Eintracht Frankfurt, if they make it through three rounds of qualification, will play in the group stages of the UEFA Europa League.
Stuttgart, Nürnberg and Hannover were relegated to the 2nd Bundesliga, while Cologne, Paderborn and Union Berlin will complete the 57th edition of the Bundesliga.
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Surprises of last season:
Fortuna Düsseldorf:
Being promoted to the Bundesliga with a rather small budget Düsseldorf was picked to be the clear favourite, together with Nürnberg, for relegation.
Though, guided by experienced manager Friedhelm Funkel they surprised everyone and finished 10th in the table, especially thanks to a very good second half of the season.
Eintracht Frankfurt:
Even though they couldn't keep it up until the very end of the season, Frankfurt played very good football and still finished 7th to give themselves a chance of another year of Europa League.
Their play in this competition was just fantastic and nearly landed them a spot in the Europa League final, if it weren't for Chelsea and that penalty shootout.
Though, sporting director Fredi Bobic will have another tough job to manage, given that they'll lose quite a few important players.
VFL Wolfsburg:
Even though blessed with a top four budget in the league, Wolfsburg played in those relegation playoffs the past two seasons, merely avoiding relegation.
This season they never were in trouble and qualified for Europe thanks to a good finish to the season.
Dissapointments of last season:
Schalke 04:
Schalke seem to be up and down quite a bit the past couple of years and after an up season last year, they had an unbelievable down season this time around.
After finishing second and qualifying for the Champions League last season, they had to fight relegation almost until the end of the season just escaping thanks to three other teams being even worse then them.
They also fired another coach and manager to start new once again.
VfB Stuttgart:
After finishing seventh last season and talking about maybe qualifying for Europe Stuttgart had a very poor season throughout.
They still managed to finish third from bottom but couldn't beat Union Berlin during the relegation playoffs.
Thanks to that they've been relegated to the 2nd Bundesliga for the second time during the past three seasons.
Hannover 96:
After a good season back in the Bundesliga last year they were never able to repeat their form this season and got relegated to the 2nd Bundesliga.
Missing a lot of their top players for most of the season certainly didn't help, but Hannover also played very poorly most of the season and clearly showed that they didn't belong into the Bundesliga.
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Preview:
Bayern will have quite some work to do with their aging squad.
After only bringing in Leon Goretzka, on a free transfer, last season they'll have to replace Robben and Ribery, while also working on other parts of their team.
Spending 80 mil euros on Lucas Hernandez of Atletico and 30 mil euros on Benjamin Pavard of Stuttgart was only the beginning and they're also linked to Leroy Sane of Manchester City.
After missing a huge chance to win the league Dortmund knows it will be even tougher to win the title in the coming years, with Bayern looking to spend big.
Because of that they've spend as well, using their funds(and the transfer fee they got for Pulisic), they've already signed Thorgan Hazard(Gladbach), Nico Schulz(Hoffenheim) and Julian Brandt(Leverkusen).
Leipzig had a very good second half of the season, being the most stable team of the league, and finished third to qualify for the champions league.
New manager Julian Nagelsmann(Hoffenheim) will have more tools for his tactics given that Leipzig has a way bigger budget than Hoffenheim.
He'll now have to show that he can develop that squad even more and also do better in Europe than he did with Hoffenheim.
After a mediocre first half to the season Leverkusen fired then manager Heiko Herrlich and replaced him with former Dortmund and Ajax manager Peter Bosz.
This turned out to be a great move given that Bosz guided them to 4th place and a spot in the Champions league after taking them over at 9th place in the league.
The squad fit his playing style way better than Dortmunds last season and he had Leverkusen playing really solid football throughout the second half of the season.
They're losing Julian Brandt to Dortmund but were able to replace him with Kerim Demirbay of Hoffenheim.
It's a mixed bag of emotions for me trying to describe our season.
This was a huge chance for us to qualify for the Champions League given that we were 2nd(ahead of Bayern) after 20 games of the season with 42 points.
It was understandeable that we couldn't keep that pace but collecting only 13 points from the final 14 games and therefore missing out on Champions League football, finishing three points behind Leverkusen, was pretty rough just like the football we played during those games.
Now we'll have to adopt a new style of play given that Marco Rose(Red Bull Salzburg) will take over for Dieter Hecking(who'll manage HSV in the 2nd Bundesliga) and implement a completely different style of play.
We'll need quite a few transfers and more pace/fight in that squad to suit Rose's style of play, given that he's a former player under Klopp and learned quite a bit from him.
After qualiying for the Europa League Wolfsburg will have to change their style a bit as well, given that they'll start the season with a newly appointed manager in Oliver Glasner(LASK Linz).
Wolfsburg has a lot of resources(for German standards) and a solid sporting director in Jörg Schmadtke, which means they'll be a team fighting for those european spots again.
After another turbulent season Schalke will start over once again. This time David Wagner(Huddersfield) and Jochen Schneider(Leipzig) are the ones trusted to get them back on track again.
Both will have a tough job trying to rebuilt that squad whle keeping the fans happy.
After a good run of four years Hertha decided letting go of coach Pal Dardai to try something different.
This time they've promoted youth coach Ante Covic to the first team and are hoping that he can keep bleeding in some of their young talent while also getting them the resultst they're hoping for.
After a couple of rough stretches during the season Sandro Schwarz had his Mainz team playing good football to end the season, given the fanbase hope for a very good season this time around.
And given the squad, even if one or two players might leave to bigger clubs, they should have a better year the this past season, given the development of younger guys like Jean-Philippe Mateta, Aaron Martin and Jean-Paul Boetius.
There it is, the discussion thread for the upcoming season of the Bundesliga.
I hope you've enjoyed the intro and are interested in discussing everything about the league in here.
So let's enjoy the ride...
