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Halfway through season, German Bundesliga still booming

Xinhua, December 22, 2015 Adjust font size:

With the Bundesliga halfway down the season, not everybody is happy about the winter break's inactivity. Most German football fans are counting down the days without their beloved football before the second half of the Bundesliga kicks off on January 22, 2016.

The winter break is the time to reflect on the past and what the future holds, like the 2016 European Championship in France, the scandals at FIFA and UEFA, what happened in the last months of the Bundesliga season and the worries about just how powerful the English Premier League will be next season when the new TV contract and its dramatically increased revenues kick in.

Of course the Polish striker Robert Lewandowski found a safe place in history books after his five goals in nine minutes (51st to 60th) against Wolfsburg. And the first half of the 2015/2016 season ended in a flood of headlines about Pep Guardiola and his successor at Bayern next summer, Carlo Ancelotti. But the announcement of the upcoming merry-go-round involving the superstar-coaches came as no shock as Guardiola's departure has been expected for the past few months.

German football fans are basically happy to see the revival of a club like Borussia Dortmund who could well challenge the league's top dog, Bayern Munich (only 8 goals conceded in 15 games). Looking at the table, the Bavarians are eight points ahead after 17 of the 34 games but Dortmund has come back to life after coach Thomas Tuchel joined the "black and yellows".

Now the answer to the question as to who will win the championship might well produce a different answer than expected. There is still a gap to top of the table Bayern Munich (46 points) and there is also one to the rest of the league chasing second-placed Dortmund (38 points) who average crowds of 81,076.

A look at the goal scoring list might provide a first hint as Dortmund's Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is in the lead with 18 goals ahead of Bayern Munich's Robert Lewandowski (15) and Thomas Mueller (14). In danger of being relegated last season, Borussia, Bayern Munich's main rivals in the past few years, is well and truly back and taking on the role as "Bayern hunter" after clubs like Schalke, Wolfsburg, Borussia Moenchengladbach or Bayer Leverkusen all failed to take.

Besides first and second-placed Aubameyang and Lewandowski, Douglas Costa (Bayern Munich) is regarded to be the season's top striker so far, followed by Dortmund's Henrikh Mkhitaryan (Borussia Dortmund), Javier Hernandez (Bayer Leverkusen) and Granit Xhaka (Borussia Moenchengladbach. Kevin Volland (TSG Hoffenheim) scored the fastest goal in Bundesliga history when netting after just nine seconds against Bayern Munich (1-2).

Despite Dortmund's rise up the table, the surprise package is Hertha BSC (the German Leicester) from the capital as the team coached by the Hungarian Pal Dardai is currently sitting pretty in third which would directly qualify them for the Champions League. Hertha's budget is far from being similar to that of the league's bigger clubs but Dardai has managed to create a special team spirit.

Hertha's success is seen as another example that the German Bundesliga is one of few really competitive leagues in Europe, meaning more or less every team can beat the others except when Bayern Munich is playing. Recently 1. FC Cologne (9th) beat Borussia Dortmund (2nd) 2-1, Moenchengladbach (4th) beat Bayern Munich 3-1, FC Augsburg (12th) beat Schalke (2-1), and newcomers SV Darmstadt 98 (13th) beat Bayer Leverkusen 1-0, VfB Stuttgart (15th) beat VfL Wolfsburg (7th) 3-1 and Hamburger SV (10th) trounced Dortmund 3-1.

On top of it all, the second newly-promoted team FC Ingolstadt has finished the first 17 games in a very respectable 11th place.

The statistics for goals and crowds show that the German Bundesliga is again on the way to becoming one of (if not the) Europe's top leagues. Last season 2.75 goals were scored per game (more than in any other league) and 43,500 turned up to every game (36,000 Premier League, 26,800 Primera Division). Endi