Every year, the German Football League holds its annual season for the Bundesliga, the first soccer league comprised of Germany’s top teams, including Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Bayer 04 Leverkusen, and many more. The 2015-2016 season of the Bundesliga is halfway done and will continue until its end in the second weekend of May.

Bayern Munich is in first place, having a total of fifty-three points, leading the table by a margin of eight points over Borussia Dortmund. Even though it is regularly expected of Bayern Munich to dominate, it started the season with ten straight wins, the most consecutive wins ever recorded in the history of the Bundesliga.

So far, and to the surprise of some, the top scorer this season is Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, the superstar striker for Borussia Dortmund. As of week 20 of the Bundesliga season, Aubameyang has scored twenty goals, one mark higher than the nineteen league-leading goals that Alexander Meier netted in the 2014-2015 season campaign. In contrast, Meier, attacking midfielder of Eintracht Frankfurt, has only scored eleven goals this time around. Only time will tell if he can retain his record of being the top goal scorer this season.

With Borussia Dortmund no longer able to utilize the talents of its previous successful coach, Jürgen Klopp, new coach Thomas Tuchel has rejuvenated Dortmund and has continued the success the club had experienced over the past few seasons with Klopp in charge. 

Looking around the league at this point in the season, many teams have underperformed. Going into the season, a popular dark horse in terms of contention for the title may very well have been SV Werder Bremen, which, as of week 20, currently resides in 16th place. This puts the team in an extremely dangerous position of potentially being relegated, which would mark the first time in thirty-five years. In contrast, Werder Bremen is having much success in the DFB-Pokal, a cup tournament comprised of German soccer teams from the professional as well as the amateur leagues playing head-to-head games in a “Do-or-Die” format starting with sixty-four games in the first round alone. After a surprise victory over Bayer 04 Leverkusen in the Quarter-Finals, the team has advanced into the Semi-Finals.

Perhaps the biggest surprise during the course of this season may be the success of Hertha BSC, which is currently in 3rd place as of week 20 of the Bundesliga. 

Expect more updates of the 2015-2016 Bundesliga season soon!