Bundesliga Final Day Preview

9:30 ET Schalke 04 VS TSG Hof­fen­heim
9:30 ET Bay­ern Munich VS VfB Stuttgart
9:30 ET VfL Wolfs­burg VS Werder Bre­men
9:30 ET Arminia Biele­feld VS Han­nover 96
9:30 ET Energie Cot­tbus VS Bayer Lev­erkusen
9:30 ET FC Cologne VS VfL Bochum
9:30 ET Karl­sruhe VS Hertha Berlin
9:30 ET Borus­sia Monchenglad­bach VS Borus­sia Dort­mund
9:30 ET Ein­tra­cht Frank­furt VS Ham­burg SV

The Meis­ter­schaft will hinge on Wolfs­burg, whom only need a draw at home to Werder Bre­men, who wouldn’t been keen on help­ing Bay­ern Munich in the first place. Bre­men also have the DFB Pokal final in a few days, so are likely to rest key (and tired) play­ers after Wednesday’s heart­break­ing loss to Shak­tar. Wolfs­burg, whom many pre­dicted to fold after the news of Magath’s depar­ture, look sharp again after two drub­bings of Dort­mund and Hannover.

Bay­ern could tech­ni­cally win the league with a Wolfs­burg draw and nine goal vic­tory over the vis­it­ing Swabi­ans. But know­ing that this is unlikely, Bay­ern are resigned to secur­ing the auto­matic Cham­pi­ons League spot, which a draw would secure.

Unfor­tu­nately, they host the team that sits sec­ond in the sec­ond half form table. A win for the Swabi­ans would secure them 2nd and could send Bay­ern Munich to the Europa League. Cur­rent form aside, Markus Babbel’s men need a vic­tory to ensure Cham­pi­ons League next year with Hertha hot on their trail, so it is squeaky bum time for the Bavar­ian giants.

Hertha Berlin sit fourth at the moment, but a win away to lowly Karsruhe, who could still make it to the relegation/promotion match with a win, puts the Cap­i­tal side in next year’s Cham­pi­ons League regard­less of the out­come of Bayern-Stuttgart. Any­thing less and they will fin­ish the day where they started.

The final Euo­pean bat­tle comes down to Dort­mund and Ham­burg for the last Europa League spot. Sit­ting even on points, Dort­mund posses a com­mand­ing goal dif­fer­ence. Dort­mund visit Glad­bach, who need a vic­tory to ensure sur­vival. Ham­burg visit Ein­tra­cht who are already safe. Dort­mund is the hot­ter side, so they have the upper­hand, but a draw could see their late surge all for naught if Ham­burg can over­come their late sea­son doldrums.

In the rel­e­ga­tion bat­tle, all four teams host games this final week­end. Glad­bach host Dort­mund as was men­tioned and Karl­sruhe host Hertha Berlin. The other two teams attempt­ing to avoid the drop are Cot­tbus, who host Lev­erkusen. Lev­erkusen also have the DFB Pokal next week and will rest some play­ers ahead of their show­down with Werder Bre­men. Arminia host Han­nover in the final rel­e­ga­tion game. With Artur Wich­niarek back from injury, the could make the great escape con­sid­er­ing their opponent.

Cologne host Bochum and Schake host Hof­fen­heim in the only matches with­out reper­cus­sions to the season.

GolTV will be show­ing a simul­cast of the Bayern-Stuttgart, Wolfsburg-Werder matches along with a post game(s) vic­tory show start­ing at 11:30 AM.

Mean­while there is lit­tle drama in the Zweite where only a Nurem­burg win cou­pled with a Mainz loss could see Nurem­burg gain auto­matic pro­mo­tion and Mainz in the play­off game, instead of the other way round. Mean­while three teams fight to avoid the rel­e­ga­tion game on the other end of the table, and all three are on the road. Ros­tock vis­its Wehen, Frank­furt vis­its St. Pauli and Osnabruck visit Duis­burg. A win would secure any of these three, sep­a­rated by two points, safety. If comes down to draws, Ros­tock have the upper hand with supe­rior goal dif­fer­ence and a rel­e­gated foe. Freiburg is guar­an­teed of com­ing up and Ingol­stadt and Wehen are head­ing down to the new 3. Bundeliga.