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1. Bundesliga Season 2019-20

6K views 207 replies 11 participants last post by  Jeffrey 
#1 ·
With Borussia Dortmund winning the DFB Super Cup yesterday its less than two weeks away from the start of the new Bundesliga season. Reigning champions Bayern Munich open the season on August 16 against Hertha Berlin while Dortmund open at home to Augsburg. Both newly promoted sides have tricky starts with Union hosting Leipzig and Paderborn going to Leverkusen

Here are the full fixtures (PDF): https://img.bundesliga.com/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Schedule_Bundesliga_2019-2020.pdf

Seven clubs start the season with new managers: Julian Nagelsmann left Hoffenheim to take over RB Leipzig; Hoffenheim in turn appointed Ajax assistant manager Alfred Schreuder; Gladbach who sacked Hecking replaced him with promising young manager Marco Rose from Salzburg; Schalke appoint David Wagner who was sacked by Huddersfield late last season; Wolfsburg appoint young Austrian manager Oliver Glasner who got little LASK Linz to finish 2nd in their league; Hertha promoted Ante Covic from their second team to take over from Dardai and Koln bring in Achim Beierlorzer from Regensburg

- Bayern have had a mixed summer and there is still plenty of pressure on Kovac despite winning the league. The big news of course is both Robben and Ribery left the club as well as selling Hummels back to Dortmund. In terms of incoming transfers they have signed Pavard and Lucas Hernandez to shore up the defense and promising striker from Hamburg Arp. They are still hoping to bring in Leroy Sane as well

- Dortmund have had a busy summer spending the money they got from the Pulisic and Diallo ransfers mostly going for domestic talents. Of course they bring back Mats Hummels and made Alcacer permanent but they also signed promising players such as: T. Hazard, Schulz and Brandt

- Optimism is high in Leipzig who intend to challenge for the title and they return to the CL for the 2nd time in their history; the key is they look like they will keep Timo Werner

- Leverkusen return to the CL too but were forced to sell Julian Brandt. They do however bring in Demirbay, Diaby (youngster from PSG), Amiri and Ajax left back Sinkgraven. Question of course is how they will hold up defensively under Bosz and playing in the CL as well

- Gladbach bring in ambitious young manager Marco Rose but did little in the transfer market, they lost Hazard to Dortmund and did manage to bring in Lainer from Salzburg and hope Embolo can reignite his career from Schalke

- Wolfsburg were one of the surprises last season but despite that Labbadia left the club and the new manager is a bit of a unknown in Glasner who had good success with smaller clubs in Austria. They were very busy in the transfer market, not really losing anybody of note but brining in Schlager (Salzburg), Mbabu (Young Boys), Victor (LASK) and Man City loanee Nmecha. They have some good young pieces but I can see Europe taking a lot out of them too

- Frankfurt's collapse late last season means they have to qualify for the EL (progressed past their first opponents) and missed out on the CL despite being in the top 4 for a lot of the season. The big news is them selling Jovic (Real Madrid) and Haller (West Ham) for a combined 100m euros, but it looks like they will hold onto to Rebic. As a result they bring in a ton of player, mix of experience and youth. Experienced BL campaigners like Hinteregger (Augsburg), Kohr (Leverkusen) come in along with the permanent signings of Kostic and Rode. They will hope 19 year old Serbian Joveljic from Red Star can replicate some of what Jovic did

- Bremen almost made Europe last season which was a positive step for them but they weren't active in the transfer market so far and could still be relying on Pizarro and Rashica to score goals for them. Their one big loss is Max Kruse who goes to Turkey on a free

- Hoffenheim set to be in transition mode after losing their manager and like Frankfurt sold key pieces for big fees: Joeliton (Newcastle), Demirbay (Leverkusen) and Schulz (Dortmund) but appear to be keeping Kramaric. They did bring back Rudy on loan from Schalke and signed a promising Danish winger Skov

- Stable Hertha surprised many by sacking Dardai late last season but maybe they needed freshening up, they too have been quiet in the window, the big departure is Lazaro who made a big money move to Inter Milan while they used that money to sign Dodi Lukebakio from Watford (scored double digit goals last season for Fortuna)

- Schalke hope to rebound from their horror campaign of last season where they were very much in the relegation fight until the end of the season and were lucky the bottom teams were so bad. They will do it with a new manager and something of a youth movement. With the exception of Raman, all their signings are under 21

- The next set of teams are honestly too boring to really go into :D Fortuna managed to survive fairly easily in their promoted season but the 2nd season is usually just as tough. Nothing of note in the transfer window with Raman being sold to Schalke while they bring in USA starting keeper Zack Steffen on loan from Man City. Mainz have really dropped off the last few seasons and have become a bottom half team. They sold defensive midfield Gbamin to Everton for big money and have replaced him with Swiss international Fernandes. They also signed Spain U21 winner Aaron Martin. Freiburg will do what they usually do, scrap to safety under Christian Streich and their only transfer activity of note is bringing in Schmid and a couple of Korean players; Augsburg too were in a desperate relegation fight last season and since the departure of Weinzierl they have not had a consistency on the bench. They lost Hinteregger and Schmid while two long serving Koreans Koo and Ji have left. Their signings are pretty diverse safe to say signing players from Brazil, MLS, Swiss league, Denmark and making Reece Oxford (fringe EPL/Championship player) permanent.

- Three newly promoted sides this season; Koln return after one year absence and really can't say too much about them as they haven't done much, don't know too much about their new signings which mostly came from abroad. Paderborn return to the BL for the first time in 5 seasons in a roller-coaster few seasons which saw them drop to the 3BL and earn back to back promotions. As expected this team is already relegation favorites and they haven't spent a single euro on transfers while losing both their double digit scorers from last season! Also all their transfers in are from the German lower leagues. Union Berlin are in the BL for the first time ever and should bring a good atmosphere to the league. They have brought in some 30+ BL veterans such as Subotic who makes his BL return, Ujah, Gentner and Schmeidebach along with signing Danish youth international Ingvartsen
 
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#4 ·
Thanks for opening this thread HS, looking forward to the next season and hopefully it will be better than the previous two.

Among the changes this season, it should be mentioned that the number of substitutes will increase from 7 to 9. Also Union Berlin will be making their debut in the first division becoming the 56th German club to do so and the first club to be promoted for the first time since Greuther Furth in the 2012-2013 season.
 
#9 ·
Dortmund off load a couple of players with Toprak going to Bremen and them managing to get about 20m euros for Phillip who goes to Russia (Dynamo Moscow). Kagawa also makes a weird move to Spanish 2nd division side Zaragoza.

Augsburg let Kevin Danso go to Southampton on loan, he only broke into the first team in the second half of last season
 
#10 ·
The problem with Dortmund is that they have had too many players in the past few seasons that were basically useless (Rode comes to mind) and just there to fill an empty space like Kagawa. I can't think of a single player that left Dortmund then came back and was anywhere near as good as before so it will be interesting to see how Hummels does this season.

Bayern have officially signed Perisic on loan from Inter. It was initially rumored that Leroy Sané was going to join for that wing position left empty by the departures of Robben and Ribéry but then he suffered a major injury playing for Manchester City so they went with Perisic.
 
#11 ·
Easy win for Dortmund, could have scored 10 as Augsburg look like relegation candidates once more but in a league with Paderborn and Union they will probably survive. Typical Bosz performance for Leverkusen, they win but because of their defense had to work for it over Paderborn. Fortuna continue their good form from last season as the only away team to win so far
 
#12 ·
Bayern were unlucky with the goals against them but lack a plan in attack. I don't see what Kovac's strategy is other than "good players will do it themselves". Which works in the Bundesliga more often than not but will not be good enough in Europe. No idea if Coutinho can bring order into that midfield. Even Thiago hasn't managed to come up with a plan. Maybe it is due to coach's instructions as well...
 
#15 ·
I never quite understood why you went for Kovac in the first place. Sure he had a decent run with Eintracht and led Croatia to the World Cup through a tricky playoff but he doesn't seem to have the tactical awareness to properly coach a team like Bayern.
 
#14 ·
If I'm not mistaken, this is the first time since the opening day of the 2011-2012 season that Bayern failed to win at home. It's a reason for concern somewhat especially since they got one of their goals from the penalty spot and Hertha could have scored one or two more. As for Borussia Dortmund, I wasn't all that impressed. Sure they scored 5 goals but the defending on the Augsburg goal was comical and reminiscent of what they didn't work in their back four over the last 2-3 seasons. The Mönchengladbach-Schalke game was very good especially in the second half with MG being closer to the winner when they hit the post and Nubel made a great save from a Raffael shot but overall 0-0 seems like a fair result that suits Schalke a bit more with two tough fixtures coming up (Bayern and Hertha at home).
 
#16 ·
There was nobody else available I guess. That would be my answer if you asked me. The idea of a coach who speaks German and has a Bayern history is not wrong in itself, it is just that Kovac didn't really do much before. It is not like Frankfurt became worse when he left. They certainly had a nice run in Europe.
 
#20 ·
Looks like it's going to be a long season for them, worst defeat in the opening matchday by a promoted club since Greuther Furth lost 0-3 at home to Bayern in the opener of the 2012-2013 season. Why was there an attempted boycott by Union fans?
 
#22 ·
That remains to be a seen, they are largely a team of anonymous except for the likes of Subotic, Gentner and Kroos.
 
#24 ·
Some of the latest transfers

- Bayern sign Coutinho from Barcelona with an option to buy. They also sign French youngster Michael Cuisance from Gladbach but not sure how much he will play for the first team
- Augsburg have been busy bolstering their defense signing Lichtsteiner on a free (previously with Arsenal) and Jedvaj on loan from Leverkusen

As for the rumors it doesn't seem Werner will leave Leipzig this window, I expect him to join Bayern when his contract expires. Former Wolfsburg striker Bas Dost was supposed to sign for Frankfurt but he was asking for too much money. Konoplyanka is set to leave Schalke, never really made the cut in the BL
 
#25 ·
Konoplyanka never really made the cut anywhere outside of the Ukrainian league, if you ask me. ^^

Dortmund with a good comeback beating Koln 3-1 away after a terrible first half where they could have been down by at least 2 goals. Still not convinced by Dortmund yet but they are getting the job done unlike in previous seasons where they struggled away in Koln.
 
#27 ·
Easy win for Leverkusen who have scored three goals in each of their first two league matches, Gladbach came from one goal down to win 3:1 at Mainz

First every BL point for Union earning a draw at Augsburg and they held on with 10 men. Bremen too went down to 10 men and lost at Hoffenheim. Paderborn had the lead against Freiburg but lost 3:1 at home as it will be a long season for them
 
#28 ·
Too early to call perhaps but I have a feeling Union Berlin will struggle more at home than away due to pressure and expectations in front of their home crowd. That's how it was for Greuther Furth who won a few games away in the 2012-2013 season (beat Mainz, Schalke, Nürnberg, Stuttgart, got draws against Frankfurt, Wolfsburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Hoffenheim) but barely ever got a point at home and not a single win thus were already assured of relegation by mid-March basically.


4500 Koln fans singing their club anthem inside the famous cathedral : https://www.sportschau.de/fussball/...ans-singen-ihre-hymne-im-koelner-dom-100.html Respect!
 
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