As the Bundesliga enters its winter break, Ian Hawkey looks at how the German league season is shaping up so far.
‘Winter champions’ is a title that comes without a trophy, and over the last few years, without much suspense.
But the fact that, this week, Bayern Munich celebrated with real verve the fact of their holding a lead at all in the Bundesliga at its halfway stage is evidence of how the summit of the German first division has turned up the intrigue in the latter half of 2016.
It has been an uncomfortable form of intrigue, evidently, for seven of the 18 clubs in the top-flight. Andre Schubert this week became the seventh manager to lose his job in the last three months, Borussia Monchengladbach deciding a winter recess spent at only three points above the relegation zone needed someone else to roll up his sleeves and make a plan. Dieter Hecking, available since departing Wolfsburg in October, has taken over.
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Wolfsburg, Hamburg, Werder Bremen, and Monchengladbach: Each have made a managerial change, alarmed that their so-called ‘big-club’ status was threatened. And it is, by the clutch of sharp risers in the hierarchy who have none of the pedigree of the garlanded institutions they are overtaking.
Star representatives of this troupe: RB Leipzig, who only trail Bayern by the three points that went the way of the champions in the final round of fixtures before Christmas, Bayern’s authoritative 3-0 defeat of the promoted side.
Leipzig have a stirring momentum, having been promoted for their debut season in the elite only in May, but not yet great love from the wider public.
They have a short history, a very conspicuous multi-national backer, the Red Bull company, and a fan-base, which though growing, has had less than a decade — the club were formed in 2009 — to be nourished.
If their story is nonetheless as compelling as any in the Bundesliga, it also worth looking in their slipstream to understand why the grandees of German club football feel anxious about the nouveaux riches. Unbeaten Hoffenheim, the club with a small village address and the patronage of a billionaire, Dietmar Hopp, sit fifth.
That puts them ahead of Borussia Dortmund, who Bayern still regard as their most determined challengers in the division but have been saying so with such a chorus lately that it is almost as if, even in Munich, they prefer an opponent they know and have studied in detail during their years of domination, rather than an unfamiliar new menace.
What Dortmund, who have delighted and sometimes infuriated their manager Thomas Tuchel so far this season, can take credit for is laying down a challengers’ template that others copy: vigorous pressing, swift breaking of the type Leipzig have successfully cultivated.
Dortmund, highest scorers in the league, with the Bundesliga’s most potent striker, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, and inflictors of Bayern’s one loss so far, are a thrilling whirr of speed on their day.
As for Bayern, there have been frequent indications that the arrival of Carlo Ancelotti as manager has introduced too much pause in their play.
But Ancelotti will enjoy his break, relieved there is space beneath Bayern at the top and for having overseen his club’s best 90 minutes under him against the bumptious Leipzigers.
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