Wolfsburg Finish Off Miracle Season!

Con­grat­u­la­tions Wolfs­burg, Cham­pi­ons of the Bundesliga!

Wolfsburg’s mag­i­cal tri­an­gle all scored as the Wolves beat a deflated Werder Bre­men 5–1 at home. Their home form was para­mount in their unlikely title run as they took an incred­i­ble 49 points out of 51 dur­ing the cam­paign. It was incred­i­bly impor­tant, as they didn’t start win­ning on the road until the sec­ond half of the sea­son. Wolfs­burg will also make their first appear­ance in the Cham­pi­ons League next year; how­ever, they will not be joined by another new team: Hertha Berlin.

Only need­ing a win to ensure a Cham­pi­ons League spot, the team from the cap­i­tal fell apart at Karl­sruhe, 4–0. While they still have Europa League foot­ball next year, it is going to be dif­fi­cult to can­vas for replace­ments of their two for­wards: Pan­telic and Voronin with­out the ben­e­fit of Europe’s top com­pe­ti­tion. But will Lucien Favre now face the axe after tak­ing so few points from the final four games to end their cham­pi­onsip aspi­ra­tions and a chance at Cham­pi­ons League cash?

With the vic­tory, Karl­sruhe almost made a mini-miracle escape. They jumped two spots to the play­off posi­tion at the half, but Cot­tbus came charg­ing back in the sec­ond half of their match with Bayer Lev­erkusen, scor­ing three goals after Arturo Vidal was sent off. Now Cot­tbus will face Mainz or Nurem­burg for another year of top level foot­ball. Under cur­rent form, they should be favored. Arminia Biele­feld looked to have that play­off spot early, but squan­dered a lead at home to Han­nover to end up bottom.

Glad­bach ensured their sur­vival with a draw at home against Dort­mund, which ended Dortmund’s hopes of Europe as Ham­burg won 3–2 late at Frank­furt. The Dinosaurs over­came the dev­as­ta­tion of the encoun­ters with Werder, which ended their Cham­pi­ons League aspi­ra­tions and chances at DFB and UEFA Cup finals. A late goal by Piotr Tro­chowski sent Mar­tin Jol’s men to fifth and another year of Euro­pean football.

As for the match that should have meant more, the clash between Bay­ern and Stuttgart, a terse 2–1 vic­tory for Bay­ern, was ren­dered incon­se­quen­tial by Wolfs­burg and Karlruhe’s large early leads. But Bay­ern do get auto­matic group stage Cham­pi­ons League next year, and that was the exact rea­son
they replaced Klins­mann with Hey­neckes. And as for Stuttgart, despite the loss, they still made an impres­sive charge from mid-table under Markus Babbel to return to the Cham­pi­ons League next year. Not as impres­sive as 2007, but it still deserves huge praise.

Cham­pi­ons League Auto­matic: Wolfs­burg and Bay­ern Munich
Cham­pi­ons League QUal­i­fi­a­tion: Stuttgart
Europa League: Hertha Berlin and Ham­burg
Promotion/Relegation Play­off: Energie Cot­tbus
Rel­e­gated: Karl­sruhe and Arminia Bielefeld