Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich are battling it out at the Bundesliga summit, with Union Berlin, Freiburg, and RB Leipzig not out of the running yet in the most fiercely contested title race in German top-flight league history. Our sportsbook offers the best markets and bonuses in the Bundesliga.
Bundesliga Title Race
Borussia Dortmund destroyed visiting FC Koln just before the international break with a first-half masterclass that saw the hosts get back to winning ways and take the lead at the top of the Bundesliga standings.
Until recently, Dortmund could boast an incredible perfect record in 2023 across all competitions. Having been kicked out from the Champions League by Chelsea and then held by rivals Schalke in last weekend’s Revierderby, however, the question was, how much would Edin Terzic’s troops be affected by a disappointing week. Nevertheless, they managed to bounce back in style and are now leading the standings taking advantage of Bayern’s poor run of form.
Dortmund ended a full round of Bundesliga fixtures on pole for the first time since August 2019 after extending its unbeaten start to 2023 to 10 league matches, winning nine. The club has scored a league-high 30 times in 2023, outdoing its expected goals by 10, heading to the Allianz Arena in control of its own destiny. If it wins eight of them and keeps Bayern to a draw, Dortmund will win the title after 10 years of Bayern dominance.
Bayern trailed Union by five points after a shock 1-0 defeat to Augsburg on Matchday 7 but recovered ground to top the pile at Christmas and take the nominal autumn championship as a leader at halfway. However, it will be playing catch-up in Der Klassiker after dropping 12 points in 2023. Bayern is still the favorite to win the title, priced at -400 on the three-way moneyline according to the latest soccer odds.
Bundesliga Top-Four Finish
Competing in only its fourth season of Bundesliga football, Union continues to exceed expectations. The capital outfit is showing last term’s fifth-placed finish was no accident in what has been a club-record campaign so far. Urs Fischer’s troops endured draws with Schalke, Cologne, and Wolfsburg and a defeat to Bayern Munich that looked to cut them adrift of the top two, but a 2-0 victory over Eintracht Frankfurt on Matchday 25 moved them back into third. They are out of the European competitions, so they will now focus on their domestic league.
Fourth in the standings, Freiburg lost just five times all season long and is a tough nut to crack, especially when it is playing in front of its fans. With fixtures against Bayern, RB Leipzig, and Union still to come, we won’t include it in our soccer picks and parlays because it will drop many points till the end of the season.
Defeats to Dortmund and Bochum, either side of a 3-0 win over Gladbach and its exit from the Champions League, have left the DFB Cup holder RB Leipzig eight points adrift of the top spot after 25 matches but just one point behind fourth-placed Freiburg. With no European commitments till the end of the season, Marco Rose’s troops should have enough to earn a top-four finish and play in the UCL next season.
Bundesliga Relegation Battle
Stuttgart, Schalke, Hertha Berlin, Hoffenheim, and Bochum are embroiled in the tightest relegation battle of all time. Just two of them will automatically get relegated, while the 16th-placed at the end of the season will play a doubleheader against a second-tier team.
Only a last-minute winner against FC Koln on the final day of last season kept Stuttgart away from a relegation play-off, and it looks like its relegation fight will once go down to the wire this season. Stuttgart heads into the international break at the bottom of the table for the first time, taking just one point from its previous four games.
Schalke picked up just nine points in 17 matches but is currently among the Bundesliga‘s form teams. The Royal Blues followed up four straight goalless draws with successive wins over relegation rivals Stuttgart and Bochum to ignite hopes of survival. It even managed to keep Dortmund to a 2-2 draw and is now sitting just one point behind the first salvation spot, so if you’re betting online, you should expect it to remain in the top-flight league for at least another season.
