Germans all set for kickoff
> Bundesliga set to banish Germany’s World Cup blues
THE German Bundesliga returns next week to provide some balm to troubled football souls following the national team’s early exit at the World Cup.
The group-stage elimination for the erstwhile world champions is still being digested in Germany, and the return of league action will be welcome as the debate continues over what went wrong in Russia.
The Bundesliga season kicks off tomorrow when defending champions Bayern Munich greet Hoffenheim.
Newly-promoted Nuremberg (at Hertha Berlin) and Dusseldorf (at home to Augsburg) are among 12 teams in action the following day, while Borussia Dortmund under new coach Lucien Favre entertain Leipzig in one of the two Sunday games.
The question as always will be, who can stop record champions Bayern? Or will the Bavarians, now under new coach Niko Kovac, extend their record series to seven titles in a row.
Hopes of an exciting title race do not appear that high, if pre-season comments by the competition are to be believed.
“I can’t really be creative here. Bayern will be champions because they simply have the best squad,” said Schalke coach Domenico Tedesco, runner-up last season.
Dortmund were the last champions in 2012 before Bayern, but Favre, who was appointed in May from Nice, said the side cannot realistically challenge in the coming season.
“At the moment Bayern are the top favourites, that’s clear,” he said. “This season we have to be realistic. We are BRENDAN RODGERS’S Celtic were dumped out of the Champions League by AEK Athens as they slumped to a 2-1 loss in their third qualifying round, second leg in Greece yesterday.
The Scottish champions had been held to a 1-1 draw despite their opponents playing much of the game with only 10 men in last week’s first leg at Parkhead, and failed to turn the tie around after Rodrigo Galo gave the hosts a sixth-minute lead.
Croatian forward Marko Livaja’s strike early in the second half left Celtic needing two unanswered goals to progress.
Former Manchester City winger Scott Sinclair headed home with 12 minutes remaining to give Celtic hope, but AEK held on.
The Greek champions go on to face Hungarians MOL Vidi in the playoff round, while 1967 European Cup winners Celtic slip into the same stage of making a new start, which will need time – most probably over more than one transfer period.”
Bayern have had their confidence further boosted by Sunday’s 5-0 hammering of Eintracht Frankfurt in the German Super Cup.
“Of course were are confident enough to say we want to win the championship,” said Kovac, who has arrived at Munich after winning the German Cup last season with Eintracht.
Kovac, a former Bayern player, succeeds the popular Jupp Heynckes but has had no trouble in gaining the immediate confidence of his players.
He has gone about the task of firng the players up again with great zeal, said club chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, who added: “It is noticeable that he trains really hard.”
A 29th league title for Bayern is, in any case, not really the yardstick for Kovac, who along with club bosses is dreaming of a Champions League title.
Unlike Italian champions Juventus, the Europa League after failing in their bid to reach the Champions League proper for a third straight season.
“I thought a lot of our build-up play was worth something from the game but you can’t defend that softly,” Celtic manager Rodgers told BT Sport.
“I still felt this was a game in which we had more than enough to win but you have to defend better than we did. We gave AEK a lot of problems but you have to defend properly and we didn’t do that.”
It is the first time that former Liverpool manager Rodgers has lost backto-back games since taking charge of Celtic in 2016, after their shock 1-0 Scottish Premiership defeat at Hearts last Saturday.
Elsewhere, two-time European champions Benfica sealed a 2-1 aggregate victory over Fenerbahce. – AFP who signed Cristiano Ronaldo from Real Madrid in the top summer transfer, or some of England’s leading Premier League clubs, Bayern have been remarkably inactive on the transfer market, and have not spent a single Euro on new signings.
The only real newcomer is midfielder Leon Goretzka on a free transfer from Schalke, while midfielders Renato Sanches and Serge Gnabry return from loan spells at Swansea and Hoffenheim respectively.
The Bundesliga goes into a second season using the video assistant referee (VAR) system, with some adjustments following the experience of the World Cup, where it was deemed to have worked better after a bumpy beginning in Germany.
Video referees will be aided by virtual offside lines, and television viewers will be better informed with the aid of triple split screens and the reason for the review inserted.
For spectators at matches there will be no video replays – unlike at the World Cup – but a compact text explanation will be displayed on stadium screens. – dpa