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Team of the season
A hearty pat on the back to Hoffenheim, the unexpected and unfancied top-four gatecrashers who ultimately couldn’t quite hold on. This season has been all about Bayern, though, and not just in the normal they-always-win-it way. To call them the most beloved Bayern team in a generation would be overcooking it – the club will never be universally loved, and fair enough – but Vincent Kompany’s team were not just a behemoth but an absolute joy to watch, not only irresistible but endlessly entertaining, with Harry Kane and Michael Olise as ingenious as they were consistent. So much of the club’s change of image, as a team at least, is down to Kompany, a humble and emotionally intelligent coach who gives Bayern all the regal flow of their best teams down the years – but with added humility.
Player of the season
To some it may seem bizarre not to crown Kane the player of the year after a 61-goal season in all competitions. But stellar as he has been, this column would argue Olise has been Bayern’s brightest star. His debut season in Bavaria was excellent but this was something else – 15 goals and 21 assists in only 23 starts in the league – with another five goals and six assists in the Champions League. The numbers don’t really do Olise’s majesty justice, though. He glides past opponents and sets Bayern’s tempo, while his shooting and passing is deadly accurate from just about anywhere. That the Paris Saint-Germain manager, Luis Enrique, instructed his goalkeeper, Matvey Safonov, to boot the ball out of play for a Bayern throw-in during the Champions League semi-final second leg to crowd Olise’s flank, inhibiting the space the Frenchman could find, showed what an all-consuming threat he has become.
Young player of the season
In any other season it would be Saïd El Mala, the 19-year-old having taken the top flight by storm after Köln’s promotion. Dribbling with confidence and directness from the left, he was a goal threat too, scoring 13 and laying on another five in a struggling side. That led to a Germany call-up in the autumn – and those numbers surely would have been higher had the coach, Lukas Kwasniok, not left him on the bench fairly frequently. Props too to Leipzig’s Yan Diomande, who scored a dozen goals in a jaw-dropping first Bundesliga season. Yet our winner is a loan player, with Luka Vuskovic perhaps the biggest influence on the other promoted team, Hamburg, who sailed to mid-table safety after seven years away. Following in the footsteps of his older brother Mario, who last played for HSV in 2022 before a doping ban, representing the club clearly means everything to the 19-year-old and he led from the front, tackling tigerishly, bringing calm and even chipping in with six goals. One of the best centre-backs in the Bundesliga, the only downside is he has no chance of fulfilling his stated dream of turning out for HSV with Mario; or not yet anyway, with Tottenham, whom he joined last year, seemingly having a future captain or significant collateral on their hands, with Bayern and Dortmund also interested.
Goal of the season
This is an even tougher one, so we’ll go with a top three. Honourable mentions to both our young players, with Vuskovic scoring a memorable backheeled flick against Werder Bremen and El Mala running from halfway and through half of Bayern’s team for Köln’s consolation goal on the final day at the Allianz. Third is Martin Terrier’s scorpion kick against Köln, reaching behind himself for Arthur’s cross and looping it over Marvin Schwäbe (not dissimilar from Vuskovic’s but a bit more by design). Our runner-up is Fábio Vieira’s on-the-run lob from a tough angle against Köln, one of a number of occasions when you realised the Arsenal loanee was several moves ahead of his Hamburg teammates. The winner, though, is Luis Díaz, who had a brilliant debut season that is perhaps a bit underappreciated given Kane’s and Olise’s staggering campaigns. The Colombian’s goal at Union Berlin was a remarkable combination of graft and craft, sliding to keep Josip Stanisic’s firm pass in play, dribbling through the eye of a needle and past Janik Haberer and then smashing a shot high past Frederik Rønnow from a seemingly impossible angle.
Coach of the season
Commendations to Ole Werner – who guided RB Leipzig back into the Champions League despite last summer’s losses of Benjamin Sesko, Xavi Simons and Loïs Openda – and to Christian Ilzer at Hoffenheim, as well as Kompany. The real answer, though, is Sebastian Hoeness, who continued his titanic work at Stuttgart. Every season begins in the same way, with big-name departures (this year it was Enzo Millot and Nick Woltemade, with no time to effectively replace the latter), and every season sees progress, Stuttgart continuing to play their front-foot football. This time it was fourth place finish, a Pokal final appearance and the last 16 of the Europa League. At some point a giant will come and take Hoeness away.
Great escape of the season
For this also read ‘reluctant sacking of the season’, with Mainz pushed into parting ways with the esteemed Bo Henriksen, having lost nine of the first 13 and winning only one, for a total of six points. Enter Urs Fischer, the former Union Berlin coach who wrote the book on heartbreaking sackings and who subsequently steered Mainz to a near-miraculous point away at Bayern on his mid-December debut, before racking up six wins (and only one defeat) in a 10-game spell in the new year, lifting them clear. A great organiser, Fischer even kept the form on track when the Germany star Nadiem Amiri was out injured (through the captain returned for the joyous final games, with his team safe earlier than expected).
Dortmundy moment of the season
Dortmundy (adj.): to suggest an unexpected surge towards contention only to slip in sight of the line.
Harsh, perhaps, given that BVB were smartly governed by Niko Kovac, tough to beat in the Bundesliga and never in danger of losing second place – but having crept into a position where they could have imbued March’s edition of Der Klassiker with some title jeopardy, Dortmund performed poorly at Leipzig (despite Fábio Silva’s stoppage-time goal saving a point) and then imploded at Atalanta in the Champions League to enter the Bundesliga showpiece eight points adrift and with morale on the floor. Leverkusen challenged for this award as well, Kasper Hjulmand’s side pulling themselves back into the top four with two games to go and then capitulating at their direct rivals Stuttgart on the very next matchday to miss out.
Head loss of the season
This category should have been reserved for Jonathan Burkhardt, a calm and religious man driven to openly swearing at his Eintracht Frankfurt coach Albert Riera mid-match in Dortmund, but Wolfsburg’s Joakim Mæhle trumped him in the second leg of the relegation playoff. With his side leading at Paderborn he picked up two bookings in double-quick time inside the first 14 minutes, leaving Dieter Hecking’s team to play the remaining 106 minutes (plus stoppages) with 10 men. Wolfsburg became only the fourth Bundesliga side to lose a top-flight playoff and be relegated since it was reintroduced in 2008.
