There aren’t a lot of teams in the German top flight not named Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund that the neutral fan can easily support. After all, there aren’t a lot of sides that have made a lot of noise outside Germany besides the two club giants.
If you’re looking for a new club to support in the Bundesliga, I suggest giving Hoffenheim a try. Their accomplishments in Germany’s top football league over the past few years have made them into a worthwhile club to follow. They have also grown enough that the SBOBET odds for them have gone better over the past couple of years.
Things are interesting for Hoffenheim in the coming season as this is the swan song of the man that brought them from irrelevance to relevance to the German footballing public. They will be trying to win the against the ever-consistent Bayern Munich, a challenging Dortmund outfit, a young but competitive RB Leipzig side, and the rest of the top-flight clubs.
Will Die Kraichgauer be able to somehow snatch the title in their possibly last competitive year in a good while? Or will they see off their influential boss bring joy to his new club without taking his own club to the Promised Land?
Key Strengths
Hoffenheim’s biggest asset is their attacking power. They have a prolific scoring unit that can easily overcome any Bundesliga defence. Their 66 goals over 34 league games is a high ratio, only behind Bayern Munich’s outrageous 92 strikes.
In fact, they failed to score goals on only three occasions: Stuttgart, Hannover 96, and Hamburger SV were the only teams to render them scoreless last season. That’s how good they were as an effective attacking superpower in the German league.
Moreover, many of their key players haven’t packed up and left the team so far in the transfer window. Andrej Kramaric, Pavel Kaderabek and Benjamin Hubner are more than ready to carry the team forward on the offensive and defensive end of the football game.
Finally, the prodigious talents of Julian Nagelsmann should be able to take the team far into the season once more. The fact that their gaffer got a call from Real Madrid about taking over the hot seat from Zinedine Zidane. Under his guidance, the club can definitely aim to keep their losses to less than eight.
As long as he is the man manning Hoffenheim from the touchline, the Bundesliga 2018 betting odds for this club will always be good.
Major Weaknesses and Concerns
While the move won’t happen until next season, the Bundesliga’s youngest coach inevitable move to RB Leipzig is a long-term concern for the club’s competitiveness for the next five to ten years. If they cannot find a decent manager to continue the attractive football Nagelsmann has built during his stint, they will definitely find themselves in danger of falling off the Bundesliga pantheon.
Another issue would be the impact of the players they did lose in the summer window. Mark Uth, the 14-goal star for Die Kraichgauer, joined Schalke on a free. Serge Gnabry was also a key player last year who has returned to his parent club in Munich. Moreover, the club hasn’t made a lot of eye-catching transfers so far. They need to find the most suitable replacements if they want to remain competitive.
Finally, consistency is key for this club. They cannot pull off big victories against giants like Bayern, RB Leipzig, and Borussia Dortmund only to struggle to score against Hamburg and Stuttgart.
Key Players to Watch
Andrej Kramaric is part of a superb Croatia team that surprised many a team before putting up an admirable resistance against the French. He should be coming back to Bundesliga football with supreme confidence after scoring a goal in Russia. Moreover, he will be looked upon to carry the team in terms of scoring.
Ishak Belfodil was brought in from Standard Liege for €5.5 million and will be counted on to share the scoring burden with Kramaric. He is yet to repeat his 11-goal season in 2016/17, but Nagelsmann should be able to bring out the best out of this centre-forward.
Benjamin Hubner will be counted on to lead the defence with his leadership. With the loss of attacking firepower they experienced in the offseason, Nagelsmann’s defenders should be able to hold the backline to give the attackers enough leeway.
Fearless Forecast
It will be a bittersweet season for neutrals and fans that will search Bundesliga 2018 news pages for updates about Hoffenheim.
They should be able to compete for Champions League football, but they won’t be able to make enough chase against Bayern this term. The difference in roster quality is just too big, and the bigwigs at the club haven’t made enough investments to match the quality of players Bayern has.
However, they should be able to battle Schalke, Leipzig, and Dortmund for the second-place finish. If everything goes well in Nagelsmann’s swan song with Hoffenheim, they should be able to end the season as runners-up without any problems.
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