Score One For the Bundesliga!

Have goals ever been so impor­tant? With two games remain­ing, points are only mar­gin­ally more impor­tant than goal dif­fer­ence in the hunt for sur­vival, Europe and even the Meisterschaft.

Wolfs­burg silenced the crit­ics and showed their pro­fes­sion­al­ism by keep­ing their out­stand­ing home-form (remem­ber the only points dropped at the VW were back in August) by crush­ing the hottest team in the Bun­desliga: Dort­mund. Despite the immi­nent depar­ture of trainer Felix Mag­ath, Wolfs­burg showed that they are the team to beat in the Bun­desliga. The 4–1 win was even more sig­nif­i­cant because Magath’s aban­doned men lead Bay­ern on goal dif­fer­ence alone. With two more goals than the Bavar­ian giants, the Wolves seem des­tined for their first cham­pi­onship with weak oppo­si­tion in the final two matches.

But just as I said Wolfs­burg could afford a loss at Stuttgart and still carry the title, the mar­gin of that loss (3 goals) means they could win their two remain­ing games and still lose the title. Two one goal wins and Bay­ern only need to wal­lop Hof­fen­heim at home and scrape by Stuttgart to pull off another cham­pi­onship. How­ever TSG is back on form and Stuttgart is prob­a­bly the best team in the Bun­desliga at the moment.

With one point sep­a­rat­ing them from Bay­ern and Wolfs­burg, one would think their infe­rior goal dif­fer­ence might count the Swabi­ans out. But a big win at home to lowly Cot­tbus and it could take as lit­tle as a two goal win at the Allianz (and bet­ting against the pos­si­bil­ity would be as fool­ish as hav­ing picked Schalke to win the title this year) if Wolfs­burg stum­ble as well. How­ever unlikely, Stuttgart’s goal dif­fer­ence still plays a part. With one point sep­a­rat­ing them a Hertha in 3rd, Stuttgart’s eight point lead in that cat­e­gory could be the dif­fer­ence between the fis­cally wealthy Cham­pi­ons League and the lower mid­dle class Europa League.

Speak­ing of the poorer but fun­ner Euro­pean com­pe­ti­tion, Ham­burg lead Dort­mund for the final spot by three points; how­ever, Jur­gen Klopp’s side has a vastly supe­rior goal dif­fer­ence. A slip-up by the Dinosaurs and Dort­mund could snatch Europe from Mar­tin Jol because his for­wards weren’t up to the task.

Finally at the bot­tom of the table, Cot­tbus are ham­pered by poor goal dif­fer­ence. With­out a win, they can’t avoid rel­e­ga­tion. Even a draw would level them on points with Bochum, but they would still face a rel­e­ga­tion play­off on goal dif­fer­ence. Arminia need a win as well to avoid the play­off. How­ever with Bochum’s poor form, they could get a draw and catch Bochum on goal dif­fer­ence which is only 3 goals in favor of VfL at the moment. Glad­bach could only be drawn back into the rel­e­ga­tion zone with no points and an Arminia win or two by Cot­tbus. But even in that worst case sce­nario, they have Bochum as a cush­ion and would have to lose both of their final matches significantly.

This year, more than ever, goal dif­fer­ence matters.

Tagged as: Felix Magath, Goals, Jürgen Klopp