When the last season ended on May 18th, Bayern were still two weeks away from winning the Bundesliga, Champions League and DFB Pokal treble. The champions from Bavaria travelled to Mönchengladbach on the final day, manager Jupp Heynckes’ home town, to win an open game with 4-3 – a very emotional farewell for a man who started both his management and playing career at the Borussia.
His biggest success as a manager was to come a fortnight later though, with Bayern becoming the first German team to win the treble on June 1st. It’s a record they’ll want to defend as the 2013/2014 Bundesliga season starts this Friday – again facing Borussia Mönchengladbach - this time with new manager Pep Guardiola on the sidelines.
The Top Teams
Bayern Munich are clear favourites to defend their Bundesliga title this season and have strengthened their team with the acquisitions of - most notably - Mario Götze (€37m transfer from Borussia Dortmund) and Thiago (€25m transfer from FC Barcelona). The latter finished this summer’s U21 EURO as the tournament’s top player (WhoScored Rating of 8.4) and with a pass success rate of 93.2%.
New manager Guardiola will need time to implement his ideas, his passing game and a new 4-1-4-1 system with only one holding midfielder though. Judging on the team’s pre-season performances, the defence has struggled most with the tactical changes so far and the team has a lot of work to do to repeat their outstanding defensive record of last season, when they only conceded 8.2 shots per game (the fewest in Europe’s top 5 leagues).
In the attacking department, the Bavarians want to become more versatile and players like Thomas Müller, Mario Götze or even Franck Ribéry could be employed as a false nine from time to time. With 63.6% possession and a pass success rate of 87.4%, Bayern were second only behind Guardiola’s ex-club Barcelona in the top 5 leagues last campaign and it remains to be seen if the Spaniard’s approach will extend these figures in 2013/2014.
Borussia Dortmund are certainly the main challengers of Bayern again and despite the loss of arguably their biggest talent Mario Götze (team-high WhoScored Rating of 7.79 last season) to their domestic rivals, they have depth like never before. Henrikh Mkhitaryan (€27.5m transfer from Shakhtar Donetsk) is supposed to replace Mario Götze and topped the young German in terms of shots per game (3.3 compared to Götze’s 2.4) and pass success rate (86% compared to Götze’s 82.9%) in the Champions League last season.
The poorer domestic competition he has faced in the last few years should not be an issue with such stats and defensively – with the defensive contribution being one of Götze’s weaknesses – Mkhitaryan topped his predecessor with 1.9 tackles (compared to Götze’s 1.0) and 2.1 interceptions per game (compared to Götze’s 0.5).
Despite his better defensive contribution, the Armenian committed fewer fouls on average (1.3 compared to Götze’s 1.4) in the Champions League and scored 25 goals in the Ukrainian Premier League. Mkhitaryan shouldn’t take a lot of time to settle in and the same should apply to their second attacking signing Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (€13m transfer from AS Saint-Étienne). The Gabon international already spoke about his admiration for Jürgen Klopp’s team in an exclusive interview with WhoScored.com about a month and a half before his actual signing:
"I have seen a lot of Borussia Dortmund’s matches, and I love their style of play. My characteristics could match perfectly with the style of play adopted by Jürgen Klopp. I know they followed me recently, so we have to see at the end of the season."
Of the 25 players to score more than 15 goals in Europe's top 5 leagues last season, Aubameyang’s shot accuracy (53.3%) was only bettered by Dortmund’s Robert Lewandowski (54.1%). The Pole will be his teammate for one season, before he follows the path of Mario Götze to (almost certainly) join Bayern Munich for the 2014/2015 season.
Their third major signing was Sokratis (€9.5m transfer from Werder Bremen), who will replace Felipe Santana as the third centre-back alongside Mats Hummels and Neven Subotic. In last season’s Bundesliga, Sokratis averaged 3.5 tackles per game, which was a league-high for a player of his position and his 2.4 interceptions per game also bettered Santana (2.0) and Subotic (1.9).
In possession he has to adapt to a new style of play though. Neven Subotic was fourth in the Bundesliga with 7.7 accurate long balls per game last campaign (excluding goalkeepers) and the Serbian will fight hard to defend his place at the heart of Dortmund’s defence. However, competition has never been a bad thing for a football club that wants to improve to at least close the gap of 25 points behind first place last season.
In terms of teams that only have very slight chances to compete for the title but look odds on to complete the top 4, Schalke 04 and Bayer Leverkusen should be favourites.
Schalke were able to keep hold of their top youngster Julian Draxler (WhoScored Rating of 7.41 and 10 goals last season), despite concrete offers from Real Madrid and Manchester City - who were willing to activate his €45.5m buy-out clause - and they will continue to build a team around him.
Adám Szalai (€8m transfer from Mainz 05) was signed as an alternative for the injury prone and inconsistent Dutchman Klaas-Jan Huntelaar. He only scored 10 goals last season from 3 shots per game, compared to Szalai’s 13 goals from just 2 shots per game. Leon Goretzka (€3.3m transfer from VfL Bochum) is one of the biggest German talents as well and will challenge Jermaine Jones and Roman Neustädter for a place in central midfield. All in all, Schalke have improved their depth in the most important positions.
Leverkusen lost Andre Schürrle to Chelsea and right-back Daniel Carvajal to Real Madrid this summer, but the main axis of the team remains ahead of their Champions League return. While Roberto Hilbert (free transfer from Besiktas) and Giulio Donati (€3m transfer from Inter) compete for the role of replacing Carvajal, who attacined the highest WhoScored rating of all full-backs in Europe’s top 5 leagues last season (7.63), Schürrle was replaced by Heung-Min Son (€10m transfer from Hamburger SV).
The young South Korean international has a similar style of play and scored 12 goals last season, compared to Schürrle’s 11. He is still very raw and needs to improve his delivery though, with only 2 assists compared to Schürrle’s 7. Manager Hyypiä has a similar squad to last season, but up to now he doesn’t seem to have enough depth to challenge for more than third place, especially if top striker Stefan Kießling (25 goals and a WhoScored rating of 8.0 last season) gets injured.
Underdogs for Europe
It’s hard to predict any underdogs, as about nine teams have a realistic chance to compete for the two remaining spots in the top 6, which would allow them to play in the Europa League in 2014/2015. The usual suspects are Wolfsburg, Hamburg, Hannover, Mönchengladbach, Stuttgart and Frankfurt, depending on how well the latter pairing handle being in three competitions this season.
Teams like Bremen and Hoffenheim have potential as well, but still need to be careful not to get drawn into relegation battle again.
A bolder prediction could be Hertha BSC, who rebuilt the team well in the 2. Bundesliga last season and are under no pressure to finish in the top 6 or 7 at all. Many of their players already have a lot of experience in Germany’s top tier and manager Luhukay has found consistency with his team in their season outside of the top-flight. In the worst case scenario however, such is the competitiveness of the league, Hertha could also find themselves in the section below.
Relegation Battle
The favourites to go down are certainly Eintracht Braunschweig, who have almost no Bundesliga experience in their squad after a surprising promotion campaign and by far the smallest budget of all the teams.
Freiburg could face a difficult season as well. After a great season previous, the club have lost three of their five highest rated players in Daniel Caligiuri (WhoScored rating of 7.53 last season), Max Kruse (7.51) and Cedric Makiadi (7.14) to domestic rivals. Kruse was also the team’s top scorer with 11 goals and his 8 assists doubled the number of the second-best provider Jonathan Schmid.
With other regular starters having left as well, manager Streich has to build a new team quickly around new signings like Mike Hanke (free transfer from Borussia Mönchengladbach), Gelson Fernandes (€500k transfer from Sporting), Francis Coquelin (loan from Arsenal) and Admir Mehmedi (loan from Dinamo Kyiv). The balancing act between playing well in the Europa League, developing a new team and having success in the Bundesliga could be too much for the small club.
Clubs like Augsburg, Mainz and Nürnberg have to be careful every season and need to work hard to secure their Bundesliga status. Meanwhile, despite their ambitions to finish in the top half or even top 6, Bremen and Hoffenheim could face a troublesome campaign too. After disappointing last season, both managers need to find stability. When the highly-competitive Bundesliga restarts again and teams fight for places 1-18 – or at least for those between Bayern at the top and Braunschweig at the bottom – the opinions of most fans and experts will differ substantially.
