Happy Winterpause.
German football is on hiatus for Christmas and New Year, with the next round of matches beginning on January 9. So, it’s time for gluhwein, lebkuchen and stollen, and The Athletic’s review.
Best team and player
It’s not inventive, but then selecting anyone other than Bayern Munich and Harry Kane would be contrary. Bracketing them together is really the point, because this was the year Bayern and Kane became inseparable. Previously, whatever his qualities as a goalscorer and playmaker, he could sometimes appear apart from a team which too often, even when it was winning, could look disjointed.
No longer. Bayern’s Kane is a new version. A deeper, more broadly effective player, capable of influencing games with and without the ball, in attack, midfield or sometimes even as part of the defence.
Together, they are inarguably the standard in German football. Through the first 15 Bundesliga games of the season, Bayern scored 55 goals. For context, only twice (1971-72, 2019-20) in their league history since 1963 have they scored 100 or more goals in a 34-game season. Kane’s part of that has been 19 Bundesliga goals (from 13.05xG) in 15 appearances, equating to one every 62 minutes. How he deserved the first league title of his career in May.
Best young player
Lennart Karl is outrageous. His name has been in the wind for some time, since he scored a famous sportshall goal for Eintracht Frankfurt’s Under-11s in 2018, and — now at Bayern Munich — his debut was teased towards the end of last season, when he made a few (unused) appearances on Vincent Kompany’s substitutes bench.
Just 17, he made his first competitive appearance at the Club World Cup, and has subsequently become a Bayern regular in the Bundesliga and Champions League.
Lennart Karl is 17 and starring already (John Walton/PA Images via Getty Images)
The scale of his talent is one thing, the nature of it another. He has profound technical ability supported by this fearless ambition to change a game with every touch, and he’s at that stage of his career when there’s no inhibition. It makes him so watchable.
Honorable mentions: Said El Mala (Koln), Yan Diomande (RB Leipzig), Luka Vuskovic (Hamburg).
Biggest disappointment
Player: Benedict Hollerbach.
Background: I’m a Hollerbach admirer and thought that Mainz’s decision to sign him to replace Jonny Burkardt was a good one. He had shown what a good counter-attacking player he was at Union Berlin and he was moving to a club that were, Burkardt aside, retaining all the important pieces from last season’s impressive sixth-place finish. Paul Nebel was still there, so was Nadiem Amiri; €10m for Hollberbach was great business.
Not so far. No goals and just one assist in 10 Bundesliga appearances, with Mainz stuck at the bottom of the table. It’s not that Hollerbach has been playing badly or missing chances, though. In just over 700 league minutes on the pitch, he has accumulated an expected goals rating of 0.72, meaning he has barely seen a meaningful opportunity. That has to change if Mainz are to survive.
Head coach: Sandro Wagner
Wagner was Julian Nagelsmann’s assistant with Germany and, encouraged by their revival, he was seen as an interesting coaching career waiting to happen, as and when he decided to strike out on his own.
That moment came this summer. Wagner joined Augsburg and, bombastic personality that he is, made all sorts of noise and proclamations about the club’s potential and what he and they could achieve. Unfortunately, it proved nothing but hot air; Wagner was sacked in December, having won only three games.
His reign still featured one of the most excruciating television moments of the season. Following Augsburg’s 0-1 defeat to Borussia Dortmund in November, a Sky moderator referenced some of the banners in the crowd that the home fans had brought along to protest Wagner’s handling of team affairs (“Nobody is bigger than the club!”, “Cults of personality and marketing bravado are not our values!”).
Wisely refusing to engage, Wagner claimed not to have noticed them, saying that he had been too focused on the game. Undeterred, the Sky moderator responded by reading the banners to him, one by one, as the entire television audience cringed in unison.
Biggest surprise
Hoffenheim. In May, having finished 15th and just avoided the relegation play-off, it was touch and go whether head coach Christian Ilzer would survive the summer. He had only been appointed in November 2024 and was part of a process that saw Hoffenheim’s sporting structure ripped out and replaced, piece by piece, by new hires from Sturm Graz.
The summer saw significant departures, too. Anton Stach was sold to Leeds United and Tom Bischof moved to Bayern Munich on a free. In total, 19 players were sold, loaned, or released, and there was hardly an all-star cast to replace them.
With the money received from the Stach transfer, Hoffenheim signed Vladimir Coufal (West Ham) and Tim Lemperle (Koln) on free transfers, Albian Hajdari and Leon Avdullahu from Switzerland, Wouter Burger from the English Championship, Koki Machida from Belgium, and Bernardo from relegated Bochum.
With the exception of Machida, who tore his cruciate ligament in the autumn, every single player has been a success. Kosovan forward Fisnik Asllani, who spent last season on loan with Elversberg in the 2.Bundesliga, has been given a chance, and has taken it, scoring six goals and assisting two more.
Ilzer has done a terrific job, the main tenet of which has been hard work. As a team, Hoffenheim have topped almost every meaningful running statistic in the Bundesliga and have ground their way up the table. They only won seven games in 2024-25. They have won eight of their first 15 in 2025-26.
Best transfer(s)
Let’s have a couple, rather than just one.
Yan Diomande is almost too obvious to mention, because the €20m RB Leipzig spent to sign him from Leganes over the summer will inevitably and quickly make them an enormous profit. Diomande has been a spectacular success.
Yan Diomande has caught the eye at Leipzig (Ronny Hartmann/AFP via Getty Images)
Luis Diaz is another blindingly obvious choice since swapping Liverpool for Bayern Munich. He was very expensive, but he’s been very good.
Hamburg loaning Vuskovic from Tottenham has clearly made a huge difference to their season. Koln have made the adjustment back to the Bundesliga look fairly simple, much of which is thanks to the form of attacking midfielder Jakub Kaminski, on loan from Wolfsburg.
Burger has been another triumph. The Dutchman, 24, joined Hoffenheim from Stoke City for €4m in the summer and has been at the heart of their revival. Burger is an everything midfielder: tough, physical, wins the ball, scores and creates goals, but can play a bit, too, and he’s one of the reasons why, having been relegation threatened last season, Hoffenheim are now up in the European places.
Back up north for the best of the lot, though: without Albert Sambi Lokonga in their midfield — and his four goals — Hamburg would be in trouble. As it is, they sit in lower mid-table and the €300k they spent to sign the Belgian from Arsenal looks like outstanding recruitment.
Goal celebration that went most wrong
Magdeburg have had a tough year. From dropping out of the 2.Bundesliga promotion chase in the spring, to now floundering at the bottom of the table and facing the prospect of relegation down to the 3.Liga.
Early December brought some relief, though, with an invaluable win over Hertha Berlin at the Olympiastadion. Magedeburg were 1-0 up nine minutes into stoppage time, when Rayan Ghrieb ran through to add a second goal and put the game beyond doubt.
Ghrieb, 26, set off across the running track to celebrate with the travelling fans, hurdling an advertising hoarding on his way. What he did not know, however, was that the hoarding was hiding a three-metre drop and that he was about to plunge into oblivion.
‘Sa matao, Paco’, ft. Rayan Ghrieb, jugador del Magdeburgo, en la Bundesliga 2 😅🇩🇪 pic.twitter.com/glQjxa5dW6
— El Atlas de Brazalete (@AtlasBrazalete) December 8, 2025
Ghrieb was fine. Embarrassed, certainly, but able to see the funny side when he re-emerged. Unfortunately, the same was not true for the referee. He booked Ghrieb for his celebration, his fifth yellow card of the season, and he was suspended for the next game.
The most Bundesliga thing to happen in 2025
The atmosphere boycott, which made a resounding point about the value of fans working together.
When it became known that the Conference of Interior Ministers (IMK) would be meeting in Bremen in early December to discuss enhanced security measures impacting supporters — including the introduction of AI facial recognition software in stadiums, personalised tickets, and expedited banning orders — supporter groups around the country united in response to what they perceived to be an attack on their freedoms.
First, in an organised march in Leipzig, which saw more than 20,000 fans from more than 50 different clubs protest together in the city centre, the day before Germany’s final international of the year against Slovakia.
Then, across the country, in the form of atmosphere boycotts that made news around the world.
For the first 12 minutes of games, crowds everywhere fell silent. There were no drums, no capos, and no pyrotechnics. Instead, the opening stages of matches were played to the sound of echoes, coughs and isolated shouts from the pitch, as the fans made a profound point about their contribution to German football’s identity.
“Soll das die Zukunft des fussballs sein? (Is this meant to be the future of football?)” read banners hung in the terraces.
Everybody hopes not. And if not, like the DFL Investor deal before it, this will be recorded as another victory for fan power.
What do Germans think of their chances at the World Cup?
The closer it gets, the less confident they seem to be.
That’s partly because the national team’s form has not sustained itself since the end of the European Championship. Since the summer of 2024, there have been retirements (Manuel Neuer, Ilkay Gundogan, Thomas Muller) and injuries (Marc-Andre ter Stegen, Kai Havertz, Tim Kleindienst, Jamal Musiala), which have been disruptive and prevented further chemistry from building, with old tactical gremlins reappearing.
Germany have been weak defending transitions, looked vulnerable in central defence, and seen their chance creation dwindle. All those issues predated Julian Nagelsmann’s appointment in 2023, and nobody is pleased to see any of them return.
There are problems to solve for Julian Nagelsmann (Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images)
Their World Cup qualification was a struggle, despite weak opposition, and Nagelsmann’s side were only really convincing in their final game, a 6-0 thrashing of Slovakia that confirmed their place at the tournament. The German sporting public are prone to angst and with the memory of group stage eliminations at the 2018 and 2022 World Cups still alive, the past 18 months have provided little reassurance.
That should change in the new year. All the injured players — the ultra-influential Musiala included — are due to return to fitness before, or just after the winter break, and with the emergence of Karl, that should help stoke some confidence.
Best Tifo or Choreography
In a very crowded field, full of pyrotechnics, this one was such fun. In August, Union Berlin goalkeeper Frederick Ronnow was crowned Unioner of the Year for the third time in a row, and the Alte Forsterei marked the occasion with this wonderfully creative effort.
Union Berlin tifo vs Stuttgart – A Goalkeeper flies across the stands and saves a footballpic.twitter.com/HS0pYWsAZK
— Total Football (@TotalFootbol) August 24, 2025
“Hold tight to your love,” it says on the banner underneath, the title of a song by Ton Steine Scherben.
And while technically not from the Bundesliga, Arminia Bielefeld’s work at the Olympiastadion before the DFB-Pokal final, after their miraculous run through the competition (beating Hannover, Union Berlin, Werder Bremen and Bayer Leverkusen), is worth another look, even if Stuttgart proved too strong for them on the day.
“One day, the German sports club will play in the final in Berlin”
🖼️ Arminia Bielefeld’s Tifo ahead of the DFB Pokal Final.
(🎥: @m_bocuse)
pic.twitter.com/KlZYmfwO4N— Get German Football News (@GGFN_) May 24, 2025
Other nominations are more than welcome in the comments section.
Frohe Weihnachten!
