The 1st Annual Bundesliga Talk Prediction League

Believe it or not, we are just a week away from the start of another glo­ri­ous Bun­desliga sea­son. Hav­ing taken the sum­mer off from wor­ry­ing about foot­ball (and cram­ming in seven Harry Pot­ter books into those months), it is time to dive head-deep into my favorite passion.

The dif­fi­cult thing about this year is that the sea­son will start nearly a month before the end of the trans­fer win­dow. That makes it hard to pre­dict as teams still have plenty of time to address issues and change the course of the sea­son early on. How­ever I think it’s impor­tant that we do so. This year, rather than me giv­ing my pre­dic­tions, I think we will run a contest.

Your job is to pro­vide the following:

The top six in order. +1 for each team that you guess in the top six. A per­fect spot is an addi­tional 3 and another 2 if you get the Cham­pion correct.

Three rel­e­ga­tion sides. +2 for any team directly rel­e­gated. +1 if a team is rel­e­gated via playoff.

The depth within the com­pe­ti­tion of the three UCL teams. Options are: out at qual­i­fi­ca­tion, out at Group, UEFA Spot, Group Stages, Quar­ters, Semis, Finals, Win­ners. +3 if right. +1 if the team makes it to the group stages (and you pre­dicted at least group stage) but pro­gresses fur­ther than you pre­dicted. For exam­ple if you pre­dict Wolfs­burg to make the group stages and they make it to the semis, you get a point.

The Player of the Sea­son. You can­not pre­dict Franck Ribery. We have no idea if he will be here by Sep­tem­ber 1st. If Franck stays and he’s the player of the year, who­ever is sec­ond counts for this con­test. This one is worth 10 points.

Total points is 50. The final day for entry is August 17th. Any post after that will be erased. This gives you two match days, but pre­cedes the start of the Qual­i­fi­ca­tion round of the UCL.

The win­ner will receive a signed copy of Rafael Honigstein’s new book, which comes out in Sep­tem­ber and will be reviewed shortly here.

But what would this be, if we were just com­pet­ing with each other. So you will have 2 experts and an idiot to beat. The soon-to-be famous author Rafael Honig­stein (and cre­ator of Footbo) along with broad­caster Derek Rae have gra­ciously pro­vided their picks. So you get to see if you can beat these experts. I have also pro­vided mine and any sup­porter caught below me on the final table will be handed a bicy­cle hel­met and asked to ride on the short bus.

Derek Rae

Top 6
1. Bay­ern Munich
2. Bre­men
3. Stuttgart
4. Wolfs­burg
5. Schalke
6. HSV
 
Rel­e­ga­tion: Mainz, Freiburg, Bochum
 
Europe:
Stuttgart (CL Round of 16)
Bay­ern (Quar­ters)
Wolfs­burg (CL Round of 16)
 
Player: Alex Hleb (Stuttgart)

Rafael Honig­stein

Top 6
1. Bay­ern
2. Ham­burg
3. Stuttgart
4. Wolfs­burg
5. Lev­erkusen
6. Hoffenheim

Rel­e­ga­tion: Mainz, Glad­bach, Hannover

Europe:
Stuttgart: Needs to wait for draw on August 7 (WEAK!)
Wolfs­burg: last 16
Bay­ern: quarter-final

Player: Mario Gomez

Me

Top Six
1. Hof­fen­heim
2. Bay­ern
3. Werder
4. Stuttgart
5. Dort­mund
6. Hamburg

Rel­e­ga­tion: Ein­tra­cht, Freiburg, Bochum

Europe:
Stuttgart (UEFA Spot)
Wolfs­burg (Group Stages)
Bay­ern (Semis)

Player: Car­los Eduardo

Have fun!

Tagged as: Derek Rae, Rafael Honigstein