It can be a hard sell, but here’s the truth: there is no better soccer being played in Europe than the soccer being played right now in the Bundesliga.
Now, that statement deserves some qualifiers. Germany’s first division doesn’t feature the most expensive players in the world. Nor does the Bundesliga employ the best, most renowned managers. And no, before you ask, no German club has won or even featured in the final of any major European tournament in the last five seasons.
While Spain’s La Liga hoovers up almost all of those honors, and the English Premier League’s coffers overfloweth, Germany goes about its business with a quiet, efficient dignity. You’re unlikely to see a Javairo Dilrosun shirt in downtown Des Moines anytime soon, but beyond the limelight the Bundesliga is thriving.
For the sake of brevity, let’s just look at the surface here.
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Among the top four leagues in Europe, none have seen more turnover in the top six each season since 2013/14 than the Bundesliga. The Premier League featured nine teams in the top six since 2013/14, while La Liga and Serie A can boast 10 and 11 teams respectively.
The Bundesliga, meanwhile, managed 12 teams in the shuffle for the top six in the same time period. That doesn’t seem like much, admittedly, but there’s more to it.
Of the 12 teams to make it into the top six since 2013/14, only Bayern Munich can boast about being involved in each and every season. All of the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A had three such everpresent teams each at or near the top of their tables. You can probably guess which teams those were.
Moreover, seven of those 12 Bundesliga teams made it into the top six two or fewer times in that five year span. That level of churn is not present in any of the other top four leagues.
Now, it’s worth asking if high turnover actually indicates quality. In an absolute sense, it doesn’t. The Bundesliga’s competitiveness is not resulting in the best teams in the world, as its record in the Champions League and Europa League can attest.
What that churn does offer is a sense of uncertainty, and appreciation for the unexpected.
For ages now, one of the biggest selling points of the Premier League is that no result is certain — that any team can beat any other in any given week. Perhaps that is still true to an extent, but by the season’s end the cream always finds a way to rise to the surface.
With some notable exceptions, the biggest questions for most EPL fans is whether Spurs will finish second or third, or if Arsenal will drop that one or two points that will see them miss out on the Champions League. Almost no one who supports a Bundesliga side can ever rest so easily as to yearn for such incremental changes every season.
All of which ignores the elephant in the room: over this same five year period, Bayern Munich has won each and every season. They are, unquestionably, the best team in Germany, and can count themselves on the same plain of soccer excellence as Real Madrid and Barcelona — even if they don’t often beat them into any finals.
And it doesn’t look like that is going to change anytime soon. Bayern simply have too much money, too much prestige and too much talent to relinquish their grip on the title, especially as the rest of the Bundesliga fight tooth and nail for even a glimpse at the top of the table.
But if your appreciation for the game tends toward the holistic — which is to say, you’re in it for a good game, not necessarily for your favorite team to win all the silverware — the Bundesliga is where you should turn. A lot of American soccer fans can attest to the value of following a league or tournament without much or any skin in the game. This last summer’s fantastic World Cup was no less exciting or monumental in the United States despite the country’s failure to qualify.
And if you should find yourself attached to a certain team — say, Christian Pulisic’s Borussia Dortmund, or an out-of-nowhere underdog like Hertha Berlin or Werder Bremen — you can count on more than incremental progression or regression every season. The big swings might be tough on the cardiovascular system, but they certainly provide a more memorable experience than those tiresomely consistent leagues elsewhere in Europe.