Bundesliga Fanatic

It’s hard to put too much of a shine on this final week in the second league. Hertha Berlin are champions and on their way to the Bundesliga with fellow Aufsteiger Braunschweig. Kaiserslautern are locked into third and will play for the right to join the other two clubs in the top flight. Jahn Regensburg and Sandhausen [...]

I’ve always just liked the word “penultimate.” You have to admit it’s a great word. With all four direct promotion and relegation spots now taken, all that remains for the taking are the playoff spots at either end of the table.  (All 2. Bundesliga matches these last two weekends of the season will be played [...]

And, really, what better way to follow last week’s jelly donuts? Braunschweiger, for the uninitiated, is a lightly smoked liverwurst named after the city that provided the Bundesliga with its second newcomer for the 2013-14 season last Friday. I grew up thinking of liverwurst as something hideous and to be avoided. First, just break down [...]

HA HO HE! John F. Kennedy! Among my favorite things in the history of everything has to be the in/famous John F. Kennedy quote “Ich bin ein Berliner” from a speech delivered near the Berlin Wall and the difference between what he meant and what a literal translation of the German said. I remember being [...]

We’re down to the lasts five match days of the season and none of the big questions we had coming into the season have been answered definitively, though we have a fairly good idea how many of them are going to bear out. Hertha Berlin had an opportunity to clinch their direct promotion with a [...]

The 3:0 loss suffered by 1. FC Köln at the hands of FC Kaiserslautern last Friday has had more repercussions than just removing Köln from their place among the top three less than a week after achieving the position for the first time all season. As much as fans of the Effzeh would likely prefer [...]

I can’t say for sure where I first was aware of Germany outside of a history book context, but it’s entirely possible that the Scorpions created the first spark of what has since developed into a (I’m certain) completely healthy dose of Teutonophilia. “Love at First Sting” was released 29 years ago, which means it [...]

MatchDay 28 may prove to be the most interesting weekend of the 2. Bundesliga season.   Friday’s matches feature the showdown of the two clubs, the Red Devils of Kaiserslautern and the Billy Goats of Köln, battling for third in the league standings, the promotion berth which is the most likely chance for one of the two to [...]

Match day 27 has started with a narrow 1-0 win for TSV 1860 Munich over relegation strugglers Aue and a hard fought 1-1 draw between Energie Cottbus and VfR Aalen. The unstated goal of 18 teams would be to seize all 24 points available from those remaining matches, even knowing it’s not an entirely reasonable [...]

The reemergence of 1. FC Köln from early-season slumming in the relegation zone back into a battle for third place has, not coincidentally, mirrored the season of the club’s most valued commodity: Christian Clemens. The 21-year-old winger emerged as a bright spot in the spectacular disaster that was the 2011-12 season that was capped by [...]