The German teams in the Champions League

The German teams in the Champions League

Last week, the third of the six match days of the group stage of this year’s Champions League season took place. This ends the first leg and the four German clubs have made their first assessment of their position in the premier class. RB Leipzig, FC Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and VfL Wolfsburg are this year’s representatives in Europe’s most important club competition. Above all, the people of Leipzig are likely to have already swallowed the draw: With Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City, they have two of the currently strongest teams in the world in the group, which is complemented by Club Bruges.

RB Leipzig

They presented themselves relatively solidly against the Citizens of Pep Guardiola in the first game, in which it was 3: 3 in the meantime, but ultimately went 6: 3 in favor of the English CL finalist last year. In the encounter with Bruges they had to accept a bitter but not undeserved 2-1 defeat after an early lead. In the subsequent game against league leaders PSG it was again an unpleasant task for the team.

For a long time they were on par with the French capital club, and even took the lead at times. However, superstar Lionel Messi thwarted the Leipzig team with two goals. This means that Jesse Marsch’s team is without points after three match days and the pre-fight in this strong group will be hard work. The Champions League season could end after the preliminary round. In the Bundesliga, too, things are not going as usual and after eight match days the Leipzigers are only in eighth place.

Bayern Munich

It looks better at Bayern Munich. They lead the Champions Legaue and the Bundesliga tables extremely dominantly. Three games, three wins, 12 goals and no goal make them currently the strongest team in the competition. Serious betting providers agree that Bayern are among the most likely contenders for the title this year. With PSG and City, the bookmakers see the German record champions as top favorites.

But the FCB is also more than convincing at the national level. As leaders in the Bundesliga, they have the best offensive, the best defense and – by a large margin – the best goal difference. So there will hardly be any getting past Julian Nagelsmann’s team when it comes to the championship question. In the Champions League, they won 3-0 against the currently ailing FC Barcelona before they dealt with Dynamo Kiev 5-0. Against Benfica Lisbon, probably the strongest group opponent, they struggled for a long time and even got two goals denied. An outstanding Leroy Sané initiated Bayern’s 4-0 victory with his first goal from the 70th minute.

Borussia Dortmund and VfL Wolfsburg

BVB is currently convincing in the Bundesliga and is solidly in second place, just one point behind Bayern. In the Champions League, however, the performances are less consistent. They have won two wins from three games and will most likely survive the group stage with Ajax Amsterdam. Besiktas Istanbul and Sporting Lisbon are too weak, although the Turkish team is still pointless, while Sporting at least won against them. However, Dortmund only narrowly prevailed against both teams before there was a real smack against Ajax.

A defenseless and unimaginative BVB lost 4-0 against the Dutch champions with no chance. VfL Wolfsburg, as the surprise team of the previous Bundesliga season, has only drawn twice in the previous three CL games – against Sevilla and Lille. They deservedly lost 3-1 against table leaders RB Salzburg and continued the negative series across all competitions. As the last in Group G, it will now be very difficult to find a successful conclusion to the Champions League season. Even in the Bundesliga you have not been able to build on previous performances. The Wolfsburg are currently in sixth place and lost their last three games.

Conclusion

The hopes of German football this year are mainly on Bayern Munich and BVB to be successful in the Champions League and to collect points for the UEFA coefficient. But BVB will have to improve significantly with its current performance in the top European competition in order to get something countable. A similar picture is reflected at RB Leipzig and VfL Wolfsburg, as has already been seen in some German clubs in recent years:

While you get convincing performances in the Bundesliga, you don’t really want to succeed on the big international stage. It remains to be seen whether something can be done in the next three games of the group stage. Leipzig in one of the strongest CL groups will have it extremely difficult. Wolfsburg also has little chance as the bottom of the group, possibly the squad simply lacks depth for the double burden.

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