Looking Around the League: There is No More League, Stop Looking Around the League

The domestic season is over! It has managed to be equal measures of physically grueling and remarkably short. Every team has suffered through injuries and fatigue, and it was chaos from start to finish. This was the case in all of the big five leagues, so much so that Serie A, Ligue 1, and La Liga were all won by teams that were not favored at the beginning of the season.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the Bundesliga, with Bayern Munich storming to yet another league title. But thankfully chaos reigned beyond the top spot, with several big clubs battling it out to stay in the division, and some of them failing. Meanwhile BVB were busy with their own scrap, claiming a Champions League spot on the penultimate game of the season.

Hopefully next season brings more madness, but with Borussia Dortmund profiting from it.

Results

Here’s the results from the final game of the season:

VfB Stuttgart 0-2 Arminia Bielefeld

Werder Bremen 2-4 Borussia Monchengladbach

Frankfurt 3-1 SC Freiburg

Union Berlin 2-1 RB Leipzig

Wolfsburg 2-3 Mainz

Koln 1-0 Schalke

Bayern 5-2 Augsburg

Hoffenheim 2-1 Hertha Berlin

Dortmund 3-1 Leverkusen

Standings

Heavyweight Relegations

Schalke and Werder Bremen have been relegated, while Koln are in the relegation playoff. That is three huge Bundesliga names. Clubs with long, successful histories, league titles, and passionate fanbases. It’s great to see underdogs like Union Berlin and Arminia Bielefeld surviving, and in Union’s case thriving, but it’s also a shame to lose these big names.

Losing these big names does the Bundesliga no favors either. The league needs its biggest teams to attract global interest, and teams like Hamburg and Schalke toiling away in the second tier harms the growth of the league in the long-run.

But ultimately, these heavyweights only have themselves to blame. They’ve got much more money than the likes of Bielefeld and Union, and they have failed to do anything with it. Clubs like Schalke have been managed poorly for a number of years, and this relegation is just the consequences of those mistakes.

The 2. Bundesliga is going to be wild next season!

Your Thoughts

What was your biggest shock of the Bundesliga season?