The Bundesliga begins again tonight after a winter break of almost three weeks, with Borussia Dortmund against Bayer Leverkusen at the Westfalenstadion.
So, with the snow cleared away and Christmas trees put out for collection (all in good, orderly German fashion), these are the stories to watch as football over here awakens from hibernation.
What awaits Kompany and Bayern?
Slowly, some of the fatalism around Vincent Kompany’s appointment back in the summer is melting away. Bayern Munich are Bayern Munich, so every coach they hire is expected to lead to dynastic success, but a step back from the bigger picture shows an improved Bayern this season, who — domestically at least — have often been impressive and are top of the league.
The club’s younger players enjoy working with Kompany and his coaching staff and it shows.
Aleksandar Pavlovic was having an excellent season before breaking his collarbone, Jamal Musiala is in the form of his career and, while much-maligned and not technically balanced, a centre-back pairing of Kim Min-jae and Dayot Upamecano has performed better than anyone could have hoped. Seven consecutive clean sheets in October and November attest to that.
Vincent Kompany with Jamal Musiala (Michaela Stache/AFP/Getty Images)
As does the fact their opponents across the 15 league games so far had a combined expected goals (xG) figure of just 9.6. Bayern only conceded 75 shots across those matches, less than half the number allowed by any other team in the top flight.
Still, it feels as if this is a season of discovery in Bavaria. Former Burnley boss Kompany is learning and adapting on the job — to the size of this club, to the scale of their ambitions and to the different types of challenges Bayern face across a season. October’s humbling 4-1 Champions League defeat in Barcelona, for instance, was the precursor to both that long run without conceding and a vast improvement in the team’s quality of pressing.
So, what now?
Bayern’s next six months will be dominated by contractual situations and choices about who to retain concerning Musiala, Alphonso Davies, Leroy Sane, Manuel Neuer and Thomas Muller.
When Kompany took the job, this was one of the reservations: how would he handle the ructions of a big club, built around stars and egos, where the environment does not allow for giving everybody what they want all the time? Most likely, this will be the time when we find out.
GO DEEPER
Musiala, Kimmich and Kompany: Why the months ahead will shape Bayern Munich’s long-term future
The Nuri Sahin project at Dortmund — yes or no?
It’s still too early to tell. The first half of the season had moments of encouragement, but the virtues of new manager Sahin’s football — quick transitions with high numbers committed to attacking phases — only really showed fleetingly. In addition, while Jamie Gittens’ breakthrough has been exciting and Felix Nmecha is showing signs of evolving into a really compelling No 6, the structure around those individual performances has often looked brittle.
Can that change? The sample size is too small to say for certain.
Their away form also remains historically poor. Dortmund are sixth in the table but did not win on their travels in the 2024-25 Bundesliga until the final matchday of the calendar year (3-1 in Wolfsburg). More concerning than the results have been the performances, though, with the players accused of lacking heart and determination and, most damningly, of needing the support of their home crowd to perform.
Young manager Sahin still has to prove himself at Dortmund (Ronny Hartmann/AFP/Getty Images)
It’s easy to blame the intangibles. The injury list must shoulder some of the blame, too, with Nico Schlotterbeck the only first-choice defender who did not miss significant game time before Christmas. Nevertheless, so many of Dortmund’s performances on the road look the same and are blighted by anonymity and, ultimately, bad mistakes. That has to change as well.
The local media have not been soft on Sahin on account of his being a former Dortmund player. Nor have the fans. Both will need to see more if they are to keep faith in a coach who has only two years of senior touchline experience and had never managed a German club before stepping up from an assistant’s role to replace Edin Terzic last summer.
There are ideological questions above him, too.
Some of those ideological questions above him have been answered, though, and that should help. On Thursday, the club announced a contract extension for sporting director Sebastian Kehl, whose existing deal only ran until the summer of 2025. Speculation about Kehl’s future — and his relationship with Lars Ricken, who became sporting managing director in May 2024 — has been a media staple in Germany for months. This new contract, which runs until 2027, should help restore some permanence to the club’s technical structures and provide stability above Sahin.
GO DEEPER
Is Nuri Sahin the right coach to reestablish Borussia Dortmund’s identity?
So, Omar Marmoush is the real deal?
In time, the story around Marmoush will become what he does next — specifically, where he goes after current club Eintracht Frankfurt, with Manchester City known to be working on a deal to sign him. But it’s worth staying in the present because what he is doing in the Bundesliga this season is genuinely remarkable.
Yes, the volume of goals, but also the type; he’s adding new elements to his game all the time, which is part of what makes him so dangerous. It also makes Marmoush so watchable.
Marmoush playing against Mainz last month (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images)
He’s playing with precision and pace and combining beautifully with Hugo Ekitike.
Frankfurt’s form dwindled before Christmas, but Marmoush was still turning defences to rubble and is well capable of driving them towards the Champions League.
His surge in form is also a reminder of how talent development works — not in steady, smooth increments, but dramatic lurches. Marmoush turns 26 in less than a month. In 2020-21, he was loaned out to St Pauli in 2.Bundesliga — the second division. As recently as 18 months ago, he had never reached double figures for goals in a German league season. In all of 2023-24, he scored 12 in 29 Bundesliga appearances. This season, he surpassed that total in the first dozen games and already has 13 goals in league play alone from 15 matches.
The Egyptian is becoming a phenomenal player and that journey — his evolution to reach this point — is as compelling as any transfer story that follows.
Can Bo Henriksen get Mainz into Europe?
As a measure of just how good Henriksen’s work has been as Mainz coach, this time last year they looked doomed to relegation.
Bo Svensson had resigned in the November, his replacement Jan Siewert lasted three months and Henriksen inherited a side who had just 12 points from 21 games. Twelve months on, Mainz are fifth, just two points from the Champions League places, and were the team to finally end Bayern’s unbeaten start in the league with a 2-1 win on December 14.
Henriksen, a 49-year-old Dane who previously coached Midtjylland back home and Switzerland’s FC Zurich, is colourful. He’s a bit of a wildman on the touchline with his ageing-rocker hair, but he is by no means a clown.
Henriksen is getting results on a comparatively tight budget (Alex Grimm/Getty Images)
He has restored confidence to a team who were, before his arrival, playing with absolutely none of it, making them quicker and far more effective with their counter-press and a physical challenge for anybody in the league.
Jurgen Klopp made his coaching name at Mainz after his playing career finished there. Thomas Tuchel followed in his footsteps, before also moving on to manage Dortmund. People do not talk about Henriksen in the same way, but his work is hard to dismiss.
He has revived the careers of Jonathan Burkardt (who became a full German international in October at age 24) and Lee Jae-sung (who was a shell of a player for most of last season) and has Mainz level on points with 2023-24 Champions League finalists Dortmund, despite a budget roughly a fifth of theirs and having sold star winger Brajan Gruda to Brighton in the summer for £25million ($30.7m at the current exchange rate).
Given where Mainz have been over the past year, a European finish of any kind in May would be remarkable.
Wirtz is probably the only player at champions Leverkusen to be performing at a higher level this season than in the previous one. With good timing because all sorts of clubs are busy making their pitch about where his future should lie. That story will cast a shadow over everything else that happens between now and May and probably beyond.
For now, the odds are on a contract extension at the BayArena. There were reports before Christmas that a new deal had already been agreed and signed, but Fernando Carro, Leverkusen’s chief exec, denied those publicly.
The club have a strong case for keeping Wirtz because if ever a footballer was in perfect harmony and in exactly the right situation, then it’s him. Especially if their manager Xabi Alonso extends his own contract, which is also a possibility.
Wirtz scoring against St Pauli last month (Ina Fassbender/AFP/Getty Images)
It’s normal in German football for most transfer roads to lead to the Allianz Arena and, true to form, Bayern are interested. But with a valuation of €150million (£125.7m/$154.5m), it’s hard to see how signing the 21-year-old could be financially viable for them, or whether it would even make sense. Bayern’s priority is renewing the contract of their own young star, Musiala, and they have Paul Wanner — another ludicrously gifted No 10, who’s just 19 — developing at pace on loan in the Bundesliga with Heidenheim.
This is a proper saga, with all sorts of permutations and consequences.
GO DEEPER
50 to watch – Florian Wirtz: a ‘gift’ to Xabi Alonso and Bayer Leverkusen’s creative force
Who’s heading for relegation?
There is an almighty ruck developing at the foot of the table.
Bochum won their first game of the season on the final matchday before Christmas, but with only six points, manager Dieter Hecking — who replaced Peter Zeidler in early November — has an arduous task ahead. His side have retrospectively been awarded a win against Union Berlin after a fan hit Bochum’s goalkeeper with a lighter, but the points will not be added to the table until an appeal is heard.
GO DEEPER
Why German soccer team was belatedly awarded win after goalkeeper-lighter incident
The two promoted sides have fared better than expected. Holstein Kiel have suffered through the autumn and winter to get to eight points, but they are scoring enough goals (19 so far) to remain competitive (even if they are conceding them at a rate of 2.5 per game). They have the lowest payroll in the league, though, so Marcel Rapp would be in coach of the year territory if he were to lead them to survival. A 5-1 home win over Augsburg, who are sliding towards danger themselves, allowed them to head into the winter break on a high.
Rapp is another coach trying to do a lot with a little (Frederic Scheidemann/Getty Images)
St. Pauli? Not bad at all.
Defensively, Alexander Blessin’s side have been excellent and while goals have been hard to come by — they have scored three in their seven matches at home and 12 in total — they hope Abdoulie Ceesay, a 21-year-old signed from Estonian club Paide Linnameeskond, will add oomph in attack.
It’s a wildcard. Ceesay did not even have a Wikipedia page until January 2, but he cost €350,000, has already played and scored for the Gambia national team and was close to joining Belgium’s Union Saint-Gilloise, who are one of Europe’s premier talent spotters. One to watch. Incidentally, Bolton and West Ham supporters will remember Dapo Afolayan — he’s having an excellent first Bundesliga season with the Hamburg side.
Elsewhere around the creaking trapdoor, teams have taken big chances on new forwards.
Hoffenheim are hoping Gift Orban can come in from France’s Lyon and replace some of the goals Max Beier took with him when he departed for Dortmund last summer and Heidenheim, who lost Tim Kleindienst ahead of this season and look drained by their double duty in the Conference League, have raided Karlsruher for Boris Zivzivadze, who was top scorer in 2.Bundesliga (12 goals from 17 games) in the first half of the season.
From Union Berlin (who sacked summer appointment Bo Svensson during the break and have appointed Steffen Baumgart) in 12th downward, everyone is still in danger.
This will go right to the wire.
(Top photo: Bayern head coach Kompany; by Alexander Hassenstein via Getty Images)
