The most shocking thing was how easy it was. One would have expected Bayer Leverkusen's successful quest to end Bayern Munich's 11-year Bundesliga title streak to be titanic, full of the kind of drama and plot twists that defined Borussia Dortmund's failed run the year before. But Leverkusen ended the streak and won their first-ever league title by simply being better than Bayern from start to finish.
They walloped Bayern in a key head-to-head in early February. By the time the season had ended, they had also clinched both the first-ever unbeaten Bundesliga campaign and a domestic double, winning the DFB Pokal with ease as well. Their only loss all season came in the UEFA Europa League final against a torrid Atalanta.
The run was a combination of years of smart spending, a perfect managerial hire (Xabi Alonso), and a perfect summer of 2023 transfers. Now, with the 2024-25 Bundesliga season beginning this week -- all matches can be found on ESPN+, starting with Bayer Leverkusen at Borussia Monchengladbach on Friday afternoon (2:30 p.m. ET) -- we'll find out if Bayer Leverkusen can pull off the only thing harder than what they accomplished last season: doing it all again.
Former Bayern Munich midfielder Xabi Alonso did what many thought was unthinkable as the coach of Bayer Leverkusen — the Spaniard oversaw one of the great seasons in Bundesliga history and dethroned the Bavarians from their perch atop Germany’s top flight.
Even with the momentum gained from such an excellent season, Alonso is aware that Die Werkself has much more to prove before it can even be considered the favorite to win the league this season.
“What the experts say doesn’t matter to me. For me we’re not favourites, the favorites are still FC Bayern. We want to play well and have a good start to the season. That’s our goal — to have a good feeling, good ideas and good mindset. We’ll see where that can lead us. Our goal is to stay in the top four, that’s realistic. We have a good squad and have to go game by game,” Alonso said (as captured by @iMiaSanMia).
The Title Race
The race for the Bundesliga crown starts today…who will be crowned the champions at the end of the season?
New champions for the first time in 11 years and a story, in Bayer Leverkusen, that managed to exist independently from Bayern Munich. It brought fresh eyes to the Bundesliga and set an important precedent.
How can 2024-25 follow that? Early signs are promising — the challenge is broader at the top of the table and there will be no procession for anyone.
Bayern Munich: New Coach, New Era?
This makes me nervous. How strange to feel bold in offering Bayern as 2024-25 champions. But new manager Vincent Kompany’s inexperience makes them underdogs — another strange phrase to type — and so winning the title this season would be a significant achievement for the Bavarians.
There is good reason to cautiously like them, though, after a summer where they cured many of their technical issues.
Bayern’s midfield has been in a perpetual state of imbalance since Javi Martinez left in summer 2021 and so the signing of Fulham’s Joao Palhinha, who promises to make them far more rugged, should have an impact well beyond that specific area of the pitch.
Further forward, Michael Olise is a fabulous addition.
The attacking midfield group has needed refreshing for some time. In signing Olise from Crystal Palace, the club have not only done that but they have also diversified their threat by adding an out-to-in playmaker who drifts off the right wing more dangerously than Leroy Sane does.
Japan international defender Hiroki Ito, signed from Stuttgart, will not be fit to start the season following a foot injury in their warm-up friendlies, but he is another smart signing and his distribution from deep should help improve Bayern’s ball progression.
The overhaul is not done, but it is well under way. The mood around the club is better, too.
Coach Thomas Tuchel was never shy in expressing his irritation with recruitment, and waged battles through the media last year. So far, replacement Kompany has behaved in sharp contrast.
That willingness to be seen as a cog in the system reflects Kompany’s status — clearly, there are concerns about his readiness for this job after being relegated from the Premier League with Burnley last season in what was just his fourth year of first-team management and he is right to be humble — but it does seem as if the windows have been flung open at Bayern’s Sabener Strasse headquarters.
The Chasers
Leverkusen, RB Leipzig and Stuttgart.
Champions Leverkusen return virtually unchanged from a 53-game season where they went unbeaten for the first 51 matches. While they have not improved their starting XI this summer, they have reinforced it in readiness for their return to the Champions League. Aleix Garcia (signed from Spain’s Girona) has the profile to support Granit Xhaka, who the side cannot be without, while Martin Terrier (from Rennes in France) is another all-round forward to add to the pile.
The concerns with Leverkusen are all emotional. Their standards in 2023-24 were so high and their consistency so impressive that, having gone unbeaten domestically all season and won the double (their only loss was to Italy’s Atalanta in the Europa League final), it seems ridiculous to expect their players to chase those targets in quite the same way.
Might also playing in the Champions League mean they also lose some focus on the Bundesliga?
Behind them, Leipzig are absolutely a threat. Despite Dani Olmo’s return to boyhood club Barcelona aside, it has been a rare summer of stability — and goodness me, are they talented. New signing Antonio Nusa’s attacking threat joins an already impressive list including Xavi Simons (back for another year on loan from Paris Saint-Germain), Benjamin Sesko and Lois Openda.
Olmo is an excellent player and his departure is inconvenient, but — and this is sometimes forgotten — he started fewer than 40 Bundesliga games across his final three seasons in Leipzig. They will miss him, but his output will not be that difficult to replace.
Fourth? Stuttgart. Yes, Serhou Guirassy has gone to Borussia Dortmund, but they have reinvested wisely in Ermedin Demirovic. Overall, Guirassy is the more talented player of the two, but Demirovic is still a gifted goalscorer — 15 in 33 league appearances last season for an Augsburg side who finished 11th out of 18 makes you wonder what he might be able to do for a team who, in xG terms, created twice the number of chances from open play Augsburg did.
The rest of their team still looks so exciting, too: Angelo Stiller, Silas, Chris Fuhrich, Enzo Millot. While repeating May’s second-place finish might be beyond them, especially with European football creating some extra drag this time, but as the Super Cup showed on Saturday (they led Leverkusen 2-1 with two minutes to go but ended up losing on penalties), they remain extremely dangerous.
The Mid-Table Battle
Goodness, this could go badly wrong. I’ll say Borussia Monchengladbach.
They were very poor last season, finishing a point above the top flight’s relegation play-off spot. In a higher standard of division, which Bundesliga 2024-25 seems likely to be, they might have gone down.
But Gerardo Seoane’s second season in charge should go better — mainly because their transfer activity has been quietly encouraging.
Giant forward Tim Kleindienst is the big (truly, he’s 194cm/6ft 4in and a bit) summer signing from Heidenheim and he will become a valuable focal point in attack. Kevin Stoger has joined as a free agent after leaving Bochum in what might be one of the deals of the summer; his creativity from open play and set pieces will be such an asset and a smart complement to Kleindienst. Philipp Sander will add some valuable depth in midfield. More of a No 8, he was a valuable part of Holstein Kiel’s promotion last season.
Gladbach have lacked an identity in recent seasons and far too many players have left without being adequately replaced (Marcus Thuram, Jonas Hofmann, Breel Embolo, Denis Zakaria…) but there is still talent at Borussia-Park, with Rocco Reitz and Manu Kone in midfield, Luca Netz at full-back and Robin Hack out wide.
The data from last season suggests they probably should have finished closer to mid-table — their opponents scored 50 open-play goals from a combined xG number of just 37.72, the biggest discrepancy in the division — and if some of that luck turns and Gladbach perform with more conviction going forward, this year could produce a big step in the right direction.
Relegation Battle
Dortmund — but let me caveat that by saying they have got a lot right this summer. Ending all the speculation around coach Edin Terzic’s future was the right thing to do. Promoting assistant Nuri Sahin as his successor was logical and low-risk — especially given how well his coaching was received by the players. Maximilian Beier, Pascal Gross, Waldemar Anton and (if fit, healthy and confident), Guirassy, are all good signings, as is Yan Couto.
But, for this season, have the 2023-24 Champions League runners-up really improved?
Are Beier and Guirassy a better guarantee of goals than Niclas Fullkrug, who is now at West Ham? Is Couto a better player than Ian Maatsen, who was definitely the first choice to play left-back on loan from Chelsea (and has now joined Aston Villa)? And, good player though he is, does Anton really fill the defensive gap left by Mats Hummels’ free-agent exit? No question, he is an easier personality to rub along with, but Hummels was still the better player. And they have also lost Jadon Sancho, who was so good on loan from Manchester United on that run to the Champions League final, but who they were unable to re-sign and for whom they have no replacement.
All of the decisions taken so far make sense and stand up to scrutiny. In time, they will hopefully produce dividends for Dortmund.
This season feels transitional, though, and most likely to end with another fifth-place finish.
To be at the mercy of misfiring clubs above them — to an extent, at least.
Holstein Kiel have broken their transfer record to improve the squad for the top flight, but even that was to sign Bosnian midfielder Armin Gigovic for only €1.8million (£1.5m; $2m), which describes how small they are as a club and how big the challenge of chasing survival will be.
Kiel, from a Baltic port city between Hamburg and the border with Denmark, have never played in the Bundesliga before in their 123-year history and their home ground, which will be the division’s northernmost point this season, has a capacity of just over 15,000.
Marcel Rapp’s 3-5-2 will surely be more cautious than how they played in the second division last season, but watch out for his set-piece design. Kiel are well-coached, and that will be one of the areas in which it shows.
Speaking of Hamburg… St Pauli lost coach Fabian Hurzeler to Brighton of the Premier League at the beginning of the summer and given how profound his effect during just under two years in charge had been on the club, and on the careers of some of their players, it was a mighty blow. Attacking midfielder Marcel Hartel also left, at the end of his contract, after scoring 17 league goals and providing 12 assists in their promotion campaign and is now in MLS with St Louis City.
In different ways, those are devastating losses.
Hurzeler’s replacement Alexander Blessin is an extremely talented coach — he won the Belgian Cup last season with Union Saint-Gilloise — but the need for instant chemistry and the lack of a truly dependable source of goals make survival a big ask.
St Pauli are competent enough to stay up, certainly, and both promoted teams will be more competitive than last season’s bottom side Darmstadt (three wins in 34 games, 86 goals conceded, -56 goal difference), but 16th or above would be a triumph for either.
Player to Watch: Michael Olise
The Bundesliga has a rookie of the season award. Victor Boniface won it last time, after scoring 14 league goals for champions Leverkusen. This season? Expect Olise to get it.
Other Players to Keep an Eye On
Mohamed Amoura. A diminutive, two-footed and rapid 24-year-old forward who can finish to a really high level. His 18 Pro League goals for Union Saint-Gilloise in Belgium last season suggest Wolfsburg have pulled off something of a coup.
And in a year, perhaps it will also look strange that Eintracht Frankfurt did not face more competition for Can Uzun, the electrifying and flamboyant 18-year-old forward signed from second-division Nuremberg. He can play.
A Tale of Two Clubs: Heidenheim & Gladbach
In terms of what they have lost, Heidenheim.
Striker Kleindienst was gone to Gladbach, while left-back Jan-Niklas Beste departed for Portugal’s Benfica. In addition, Eren Dinkci — terrific last season in attacking midfield — returned to Werder Bremen following his year with them on loan and has since been sold to Freiburg.
Heidenheim scored 50 Bundesliga goals last season and that trio got 30 of them — Beste was arguably among the best set-piece takers in the league, too, so his left-footed delivery will be almost impossible to replicate.
Frank Schmidt achieved something amazing in getting Heidenheim promoted in 2022-23. That they not only stayed up but qualified for the Conference League via an eighth-place finish was truly remarkable. Second seasons do not come much harder, though, and Schmidt — the longest-serving coach in the history of German professional football — will need to produce another miracle in his 17th year in charge.
The Bundesliga’s Quirky Charm
How unique every matchday is. German football is so cause-focused that, if you are willing to look hard enough, there is always something fresh. It might be a protest, a bit of choreography, or a flash of some kind of regional identity.
Each game feels focused towards something specific that has nothing to do with the actual football.
Looking Ahead
Leipzig travel to Leverkusen next Saturday evening — August 31.
Secretly, I think Leipzig could win the league this year.
Secretly, though.
Fernando Carro vs Max Eberl was a strange, silly saga.
Carro, Leverkusen’s chief executive, was speaking at a fan event at the beginning of August and had clearly been agitated by Bayern’s long-term (but so far unsuccessful) interest in their Germany international defender Jonathan Tah.
“Well, I don’t think much of Max Eberl, absolutely nothing,” he told the meeting at the champions’ BayArena stadium, following questions about Tah. “And I wouldn’t negotiate with him.”
Eberl is Bayern’s board member for sport and Jan-Christian Dreesen, their CEO, responded to Carro’s outburst with a stringing rebuke., stating he was “extremely irritated” and that his club “would never tolerate, let alone accept, such attacks”.
Carro has since apologised.
The Verdict
Both promoted teams to stay up.
They would need to play perfect seasons to achieve it, but competence goes a long way towards Bundesliga survival and, if they can be resilient, there is no reason to think Holstein Kiel and St Pauli cannot keep their heads above water while others struggle.
Goalscorers have been lost at Hoffenheim (Beier) and Augsburg (Demirovic), and the latter finished last season with five straight defeats. Bochum, who needed a play-off (and a miracle comeback) to avoid relegation last season, have lost Stoger, who scored (seven) and assisted (nine) more Bundesliga goals for them than any other player in that side.
The promoted duo are underdogs, yes, but they are by no means hopeless cases — and that fight will be as watchable as anything that happens up at the top of the table.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
