Ahead of the New Year Football. ua summarizes and highlights the main events and the best performers in the outgoing year.

Soon people around the world will celebrate the new year 2022. Time flies by, and there were plenty of bright events throughout 2021. In our traditional results of the calendar year, we propose to distribute nominations of various qualities for teams / players / coaches, etc.. in Germany! Who pleasantly surprised us, who failed and who can definitely add this year to their assets.

Team of the Year: Bayern Munich No surprises here. Bavaria rivets silver salad bowls like a conveyor belt every year, leaving almost no chance for competitors.

Last season, for a long time, “Rotten” pursued the impudent Leipzig in the table and it seemed that this time someone would be able to finally break the hegemony of the Munich grandee, but all hopes were again in vain.

Before a face-to-face fight at 27. round the gap in the table between competitors was only four points, so in case of victory Julian Nagelsmann's gang had excellent chances to close the gap and fight for the title to the last.

Bottom line: in not the most spectacular match, everything was decided by Leon Goretzka's goal on the 38th minute with a transfer from Thomas Muller.

Once again thinning the camp of another competitor, Bayern took to himself not only the chief of defense, Diot Upamecano, but also the station wagon of the center of the field, Marcel Zabitzer, but also the creator of the last successes of the Saxons - Nagelsmann. Under his leadership, in the current campaign, the " After all, the country's Super Cup won in August is not rated so highly in the football community..

The only tournament in which Bayern Munich has failed in full is the German Cup. Two shameful relegations in the January 1/16 final against Holstein Kiel and the recent 0-5 with Borussia Monchengladbach at the same stage are clearly not the results that could have been predicted!

Failure of the Year: Schalke 04 Second consecutive repetition in our ranking since last calendar year. If everything is clear with Munich, then there are no obvious contenders for this dubious title, except for Schalke.!

An incredible, deafening failure that Knappen fans dreamed only in nightmares. A club with a fairly stable financial position (remembering the sponsorship of Gazprom) managed to crash into the dungeon of German football with a crash, having won only 3 victories this season, while suffering an incredible 24 defeats!

The cobalt defense was like a sieve that someone bought on the market for three kopecks.. 86 conceded goals in 34 games, i.e. an average of 2.5 goals per game! Even the relegated Werder Bremen and the barely escaped Cologne conceded less, and much less - 57 and 60 goals, respectively!

An urgent reinforcement of the squad in the past winter transfer window with the invitation of the most experienced Klas-Jan Huntelar, Williams, Shkodran Mustafi and Sead Kolashinats in no way revived the lifeless body of "

Schalke's squad was by no means conducive to relegation, but the coaching leapfrog and the mess in the management led to the fact that even an experienced resuscitator, like Hub Stevens, would not have helped the club. With Gelsenkirchen in the 2020/21 season, 5 (! ) mentors.

But they left in their post the Greek coach Dimitrios Grammozis, with whom "

Now the once semi-finalist of the Champions League and winner of the national cup in 2011 is in fourth place in the second division, behind Hamburg, which is in the transition zone, only in additional indicators. Before the leaders, sensational St. Pauli and Darmstadt, six and five points, respectively, but the chances of a direct ticket are still there. True, with three current favorites, Schalke scored only one point out of nine possible, so with such success, a quick promotion in the class may not be feasible on the first try..

Oh yeah, Werder. I would like to say a few words about Bremen, but their fiasco does not look so resonant due to the long-lost status of a top club and a contender for trophies in Germany. “Musicians” have long resembled a roller coaster - either an unexpected takeoff in the table and the struggle until the last rounds for getting into the Europa League, or a hard struggle for survival. The last thing happened in the last campaign. In the event of a victory over Gladbach in the last matchday, the “green-whites” would have jumped on the saving band of transitional matches for the second year in a row, but the “stallions” beat the rival with a score of 4: 2, and Cologne minimally outplayed Schalke thanks to the emotional goal of Sebastian Bornov in 86 minutes.

Separately, we can also single out the newcomer of the current season, Greuther Furth, but suddenly the "

Lucky Boys of the Year: Cologne You have probably read about the wonderful story of the transformation of "

Last season, Cologne risked the second time in the last three years to go to the second division, but fortunately the German championship managed to retain its distinctive team in the elite. The first champion in BL history. 1, after all!

In the spring, the fate of the club hung by a thin thread. The Reins were then led by the ex-coach of Hoffenheim, and now the Moscow Lokomotiv - Markus Gisdol.

The team finished the first round in a favorable 14th place, but only a point separated it from the zone of transitional matches..

It was not possible to level the situation in the second circle. On the contrary, Mainz, seven points behind the play-offs on Christmas Eve's eve, rushed up sharply under the leadership of Bo Svensson, significantly changing the balance of power in the table.

After the defeat just from the "

In six rounds under the guidance of a new specialist, Cologne scored ten points, including, as we wrote above, in the last round defeating Schalke in a throat duel (1: 0), at the last moment squeezing Werder Bremen.

In the "

In the first meeting in Kiel, the teams exchanged quick goals at 3 and 4 minutes, but then Cologne issued a rout by the break, adding the fifth to four goals in the second half, so that the minimum defeat (0: 1) in the return game on the Rhine was.

Despite the successful completion of the task, the management did not really see the future with the current mentor, having made a rather risky decision to appoint the head coach of Paderborn Stefen Baumgart, who in the 2019/20 season brought the modest club to the elite.

And wow, they hit the bull's-eye! The " These are really the main lucky people of 2021 in Germany!

Makeover of the Year: Borussia Dortmund / Mainz Let's start with the "

2 wins, 4 draws and 13 defeats in the first round put handsome Mainz on the brink of disaster. The team looked no stronger than the hopeless Schalke, showing terrible results.

Less than two games last season, the management decided to fire your acquaintance from the recent work with Leipzig Akim Bayerlorzer after a total of 2: 7 in meetings with, ironically, RB and Stuttgart (these will still have time to fire another coach, from Dortmund! Again, the question is, as in the case of Schalke and David Wagner, why was it necessary to give Bayerlorzer the opportunity to run the club in the preseason, if it was possible to hire another specialist. And if it fully supported the specialist, then why then dismissed him after two unsuccessful games at the start? Oh, this Bundesliga.

Neither the invitation of Jan-Moritz Lichte, nor the arrival of Jan Sievert changed the situation, and now day X has come. On January 4, 2021, Bo Svensson, who once worked with the youth team of the 05s, and who played for the team, took over as chief..

To understand how cool this solution turned out to be, let's just take a look at the following numbers:.

Bayerlorzer / Lichte / Sievert - 14 games, + 1 \u003d 3-10, 14:31, 6 points and 17th place in the table;

Svensson - 20 games, + 9 \u003d 6-5, 25:25, 33 points and 12th place, which was so low solely because of the failure in the first round!

This season, we see that Mainz's success was by no means accidental.. Intermediate ninth place, four points behind the Champions League zone! It is unlikely that the team from the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate will jump so high, but to compete for access to the Europa League, or at worst for the Conference League, is quite capable and even obliged!

*** Last year we brought Borussia into the disappointment of the year and it is quite reasonable, but this time it will not work to call the results of the " Let's explain now.

The fact is that after the dismissal of Lucien Favre, 1: 5 from Stuttgart, as well as defeats at the end of the first round from Union, Borussia M and Bayer, they did not expect anything from the club from Dortmund in the second half of the season under the leadership of Edin Terzich. Nevertheless, the "

Having started for the repose, the Croatian German finally managed to reach out to his players at the most crucial moment, when the season could still be made very, very successful.. The defeat to Eintracht Frankfurt (1: 2) in a home match of the twenty-seventh round seemed to put an end to Borussia's chances to reach the group stage of the Champions League next year. The gap from the third Wolfsburg at that time was 11 points (! ), and from "

Sheer madness, but after that meeting, Dortmund produced an incredible streak of seven victories in a row, which began with an emotional strong-willed Victoria in Stuttgart (3: 2 with Ansgar Knauff's goal in the last minutes), which became a turning point.

In the course of this leap, victories were obtained over direct competitors, as well as strong teams like Union (2: 0), Wolfsburg (2: 0), Leipzig (3: 2), Mainz (3: 1) and Bayer (3:. It looked like a fairy tale, since almost no one believed that the "

Apparently, such local successes and stability of Terzich's gang significantly frightened the competitors, since after the 27th round the “wolves” got only seven points out of 21 possible (having suffered 4 defeats along the way), and Eintracht performed no better - + 3 \u003d 1-3 and the loss of the well-deserved. Borussia's worst enemies helped, what to say!

Dortmund, in the last round, took advantage of the defeat of Wolfsburg from Mainz (2: 3), beating Oliver Glasner's team in the table in terms of additional indicators (both clubs scored 61 points), in a word, having done almost impossible!

In addition, the Rursa also reached the quarterfinals of the main European Cup, losing a ticket to the semifinals of Manchester City in a worthy struggle, and also won the first serious trophy since 2017 - the German Cup.. Julian Nagelsmann's Leipzig was destroyed in the final 4: 1.

In the current campaign, already under the leadership of Marco Rose, DB, with all its personnel losses, manages to go on the iron second place, which is also a pleasant surprise. If not for the disgusting refereeing in Der Classic and the annoying draw in Bochum, the subtotal would have been even sweeter.

Discovery of the Year: Freiburg These incredible guys Christian Streich! In the summer of 2016, the vultures returned to the elite as the winner of the second division (significantly ahead of RB Leipzig, which became the second in many respects, including performance) and since then have finished only twice in the bottom half of the table.

Freiburg has always been exclusively the middle peasant of the Bundesliga, who occasionally joined the struggle for European cups with varying success, but in the last campaign, for example, took tenth place.

It is all the more surprising to see a modest club from the Black Forest in an intermediate third place in the table, straight in the Champions League zone! For a team that is in tenth place in the championship in terms of the total cost of the composition of all 18 participants in the current season, such indicators are akin to a feat..

Some incredible and sparkling football “black and white” do not show, taking their toll due to the competent organization of the game in defense, implementation (28 real goals at 28.55 xG) and standards. The last component works best at Europa-Park-Stadion in the top 5 leagues of the European leagues at the moment.! Freiburg has hit the opponents' goal 12 times this season from corners / free kicks, etc.. , as Borussia Monchengladbach managed to clearly see, having eaten almost all of the six goals into her own net just after the set. The closest pursuers Streich, Liverpool and Montpellier each have 10 goals from set pieces.

In short, with such a set, the maximum of a strong middle peasant manages to go so high and if it does not fill at least half the distance of the second round, it will be at least in the group stage of the Europa League.!

Christian Streich has assembled another great team, and some of the local heroes will surely be promoted after this season.. The first applicants are the master of standards Vincenzo Grifo and center-back Niko Schlotterbek, who are actively interested in Borussia Dortmund.

Regression of the Year: RB Leipzig / Wolfsburg / Borussia Monchengladbach No surprises here either. To some extent, Eintracht Frankfurt can be ranked here, but the " Oliver Glasner's team will slightly overperform this season, gaining 7 points more than expected, but the quality of the game improves from match to match, so, as they say, we will see. But you can't say that about other competitors..

The ex-Glasner team Wolfsburg most painfully suffered the " One precedent with an extra substitution in the German Cup is worth what!

“Wolves” started well - with five matches without defeat, in which there was a place at once four victories in a row, but after the away defeat from Hoffenheim something broke, and began! Only two victories in the next 11 rounds, and now the fourth German team of last season found itself in the infamous 13th place in the table.

The feverish change of van Bommel to ex-Werder coach Florian Kofeldt has yet to justify itself. The effect of the new broomstick worked, but only in the first rounds, and then five consecutive fiascoes followed, even with far from the strongest teams (except, of course, Dortmund and Bayern Munich).

We add here the aforementioned technical defeat in the cup with Preussen from Munster, and a humiliating last place in the weakest group of the Champions League along with Quartet C, and we have a form failure. Even a failure! Although the lack of employment in European competitions and the national cup may even benefit in the second half of the season. But this is unlikely to allow Wolfsburg to take off noticeably in the table..

The next loser to suffer from massive coaching migration in the Bundesliga is Gladbach Borussia. The team has progressed systematically under the leadership of Salzburg who reached the 2018 Europa League semi-finals, Marco Rose, since the 2019/20 season..

The “Stallions” first returned to the Champions League after four years of inactivity, and there they left the real group of death with Real Madrid, Inter Milan and Shakhtar Donetsk. The Pitmen were completely destroyed with a catastrophic total score of 10: 0! In the Bundesliga, before January, everything was not hopeless either - an intermediate seventh place due to the huge number of draws, but only one point behind the Champions League zone at the equator of the championship.

Everything changed with the news of Rose's summer departure to Dortmund. The team seemed to be changed. Borussia fell into a monstrous crisis, having issued a seven-match streak in a row without victories, then interrupted it with the defeat of Schalke, and only then did it slightly perk up. True, an unexpected defeat to Stuttgart in the penultimate round threw the club to eighth place from the seventh line, giving the right to play in the League of Conferences.

On the sidelines, it was rumored that the players openly leaked their coach, having lost faith in him and his project. Additional severity was added by the elimination in the German Cup quarterfinals just from the Dortmund namesakes, as well as without a single chance in the championship league from Manchester City already in the first stage of the playoffs.

In general, the arrival of Addy Hutter looked like a very correct and logical step for Max Eberl and the company, but so far the ex-mentor of Young Boys, Salzburg and Eintracht is failing in a new place..

Borussia is stuck in the bottom half of the table, two points from the relegation zone and a disastrous streak of losses before Christmas, crowned by the already legendary 0-6 from Freiburg. The chair under Hutter is wobbling more and more, and if the situation does not change dramatically from the very first rounds after the holidays, then Gladbach will certainly get a new mentor.

And it was worth for the sake of this to leave the brought to mind Eintracht Frankfurt, which in 2019, under his leadership, stopped one step away from the Europa League final?

The most strange and illogical here is the fall of Leipzig.. Although why is it illogical? If you cannot somehow hold on to your most precious asset, that is, Julian Nagelsmann, who built the system in Saxony for two years, as well as the leaders of the defense and center of the field, then what remains to be expected?

The loss of Upamecano and Zabitzer is okay, but the departure of perhaps the strongest young specialist on planet Earth has become a decisive factor in the current setbacks..

After a mega-confident vice-championship last season, as well as the final of the German Cup, RB noticeably stalled in the Bundesliga. In the summer, Nagelsmann was replaced by another coaching product of the Red Bull system Jesse Marsh, but soon he was asked to the door, not allowing him to finish even before the end of the first round.

The borderline tenth place really looks very undignified for the “bulls” with their ambitions, and it seems that the management has finally decided to move away from the traditional philosophy and dogmas of their system, deciding to follow the vector chosen by the current coach of Bavaria. That is, to hire not a coach who fanatically follows the canons, but a more flexible specialist, who eventually became Domenico Tedesco.

He started for his health, destroying Borussia M in all respects, but then offensive misfires followed, the dry defeat from the hopeless Arminia (0: 2), which is unlikely to hold out in the first Bundesliga at the end of this season, looks especially sour! But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Leipzig has a stunning roster of potential, and Tedesco will probably be able to turn the winter training camp in his favor, so we can expect just progress, and not further regression of the team..

There are still unfinished business in the national cup. Bavaria is no longer there, but to take revenge from Dortmund for May 1: 4 oh how you want! The only trouble is that the club that played twice in a row in the Champions League playoffs, and even reached the semifinals last year, this time flew out of the group to the Europa League, and will begin its journey from the 1/16 finals.. True, in the group with Manchester City and space PSG, the final seven points do not look so bad with all the summer losses of the team.

Player of the Year: Robert Lewandowski (Bayern) Specifically, in calendar year 2021, in terms of a combination of factors, Lewandowski had less serious arguments for the Ballon d'Or than a year earlier, however, he has practically no equal in domestic German tournaments.

The Pole broke two records of the great Gerd Muller at once, including the number of goals in one season. In the game of the last round of the 20/21 campaign against Augsburg at the very last minute, the forward scored the 41st goal, overtaking the legendary German striker by one effective shot.

Best Young Player of the Year: Florian Wirtz (Bayer) The departure of Leverkusen prima Kai Havertz in Chelsea has left this sacred place for another super talent "

It is scary to imagine the current Bayer without the feasible participation of Flo, who is marked by effective actions in almost every match.! For example, in the fall, the midfielder had an impressive streak of seven fights with a goal or an assist (or maybe both), adding to the 5 + 8 in the Bundesliga 3 + 3 at the UEFA Europa League group stage.

The German scored to absolutely all rivals in the second European Cup - Ferencvaros, Celtic, and Betis, keeping silent only in the away game with the “cucumbers” and the game of the last round with the Scots (Gerardo Seoane gave his leader a rest).

It is possible that this season will be the last for Wirtz in Bayer. The player's current price tag is 70 million. euro according to Transfermarkt, but this is unlikely to be a significant problem for some of the grandees. Just 18 years old and incredible prospects for further progress - it is definitely worth it!

Opening of the year among players: Patrick Schick (Bayer) The Czech striker proved to be successful at the last European Championship, reaching the quarterfinals with his national team, simultaneously removing Holland from the way, which Schick, by the way, scored. In addition, Patrick had a handsome goal from the center of the field against Scotland - the best one at Euro 2020!

Apparently, the cool game in the tournament helped the player gain additional confidence in his abilities and start making a show already in club football..

This season is the best of Patrick Schick's career. 16 goals and 7 assists in 14 Bundesliga matches and the status of the second best striker in the championship after Robert Lewandowski!

For comparison, hitherto in BC. 1 record for the Czech was 10 goals for Leipzig two seasons earlier, and in general in his career - 11, in the 2016/17 season with Sampdoria in Serie A.

In short, Shik has 17 more matches to develop his advantage and all the cards in his hand.. On January 24 of next year he will turn only 26 years old, so it's time to take the most important step in his career and move to a top club!

Best Coach of 2021?

Only Julian Nagelsmann comes to mind, although there were no less worthy candidates.

If Oliver Glasner and Addy Hutter had not smeared the ending of last season, and Hutter had not yet failed in the current campaign at the helm of Borussia Gladbach, the choice would have fallen on one of them. Or Marco Rose for his quite successful leadership of Dortmund, but again, the winter news of the specialist's departure to Signal Iduna Park led to a monstrous crisis in the camp of "

Not to call a Bavarian the best coach just because of the salad bowl!

Munich can take her with a mediocre coach like Niko Kovacs. But the competitors left no choice.

The defeat from Borussia D in the final of the German Cup + the lost championship race of Bavaria is not the result that allows you to grab your head, but the confidently won group in the Champions League (6 wins out of 6) and the leadership in the Bundesliga with a serious advantage is already something-!

In short, you already know everything about the ex-coach of Hoffenheim and Leipzig..