The Beginner’s Guide to the Bundesliga

The Bun­desliga, Germany’s top-flight pro­fes­sional foot­ball league, is one of the best-attended sports leagues in the world. Boast­ing the high­est aver­age atten­dances in Europe, the Bun­desliga attracts an aver­age crowd of almost 39,000 spec­ta­tors for each league match.

Despite strong domes­tic sup­port, the Bun­desliga does not enjoy the same lev­els of inter­na­tional sup­port as the Span­ish, Eng­lish and Ital­ian leagues. Nev­er­the­less, the Bun­desliga pos­sesses gen­uine finan­cial clout, and is also home to some of the finest foot­ball play­ers on the planet.

League Structure

Eigh­teen Ger­man Foot­ball clubs par­tic­i­pate in the Bundlesliga. These clubs form part of a league sys­tem in which each club plays each of the other clubs in the league, home and away, dur­ing the course of the sea­son. Three points are awarded for a win and a sin­gle point is awarded for a draw.

The two low­est placed clubs are rel­e­gated to the Bun­desliga 2 at the con­clu­sion of each sea­son, whilst two clubs from the same league are pro­moted to the topflight league. The club ranked 16th in the Bun­desliga, is required to win a two match play­off against the 3rd ranked team in the Bun­desliga 2, in order to retain its place in the first division.

The Bun­desliga sea­son runs par­al­lel to that of the other major Euro­pean leagues, thereby facil­i­tat­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in Euro­pean tour­na­ments. The sea­son begins in August and con­tin­ues until the end of May. Play­ers are given a brief mid-season break dur­ing the Christ­mas hol­i­days in Germany.

The Bun­desliga in Europe

At the con­clu­sion of the Bun­desliga sea­son, the two top placed clubs are granted auto­matic qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the group stages of the UEFA Cham­pi­ons League Foot­ball Tour­na­ment, whilst the 3rd placed club receives an entry to the third qual­i­fy­ing round of the Cham­pi­ons League. The fourth and fifth placed clubs are also granted access to Europe via qual­i­fy­ing rounds for the Europe League (for­merly the UEFA Cup).

Bun­desliga clubs gen­er­ally give good account of them­selves in Euro­pean foot­ball. Bay­ern Munich, Borus­sia Dort­mund and Ham­burg have won the Cham­pi­ons League six times between them­selves, with Bay­ern Munich tak­ing four Cham­pi­ons League titles. Ger­man clubs have also taken six UEFA Cup titles.

Major Rival­ries

The Bun­desliga dif­fers from many other major Euro­pean foot­ball leagues in that there is no major rivalry between two dom­i­nant teams. Instead, Bay­ern Munich has dom­i­nated the Bun­desliga for decades and cur­rently boasts 20 league titles — 15 more than clos­est rival Borus­sia Dortmund.

Major Bun­desliga rival­ries instead tend to arise between teams com­ing from a sin­gle town or city. Bay­ern Munich, as an exam­ple, has an endur­ing rivalry with Munich 1860, which is gen­er­ally per­ceived as a rivalry between the princes and the pau­pers of Ger­man football.

Ham­burg based teams Ham­burger SV and St. Pauli have also nur­tured a sim­mer­ing rivalry over many decades, as a result of which cup or league der­bies between these two clubs are amongst the most eagerly antic­i­pated fix­tures of the Ger­man foot­ball season.