One of the last vestiges of our trip to Germany last fall will be over tomorrow.
As you may recall, one of the reasons Loraine and I decided to tentatively dip our toes back into the waters of international travel was to attend a soccer match featuring our favored team, RB Leipzig. That was back at the end of September, and tomorrow their season--of which we saw one of their first matches--ends when they take on Eintracht Frankfurt for the DFB Cup--basically, the championship of Germany.
And then the team--at least as we saw it--will say "bye bye".
Their league schedule- the Bundesliga--actually wrapped up this past weekend and, as they seem to do every year, the team finished in third. That's actually a good thing, as the top four teams in the league qualify for the Champions League, which is what every team who plays in Europe aspires to. However, if they didn't have the slow start to the year that they did--only a few points in the matches before we saw them and a coach who got the axe--they might have actually challenged for the Bundesliga title this season.
But it didn't happen.
The match they're playing tomorrow is a repeat of the title they won last year. The DFB Cup (or Pokal, as it's called in Germany) isn't tied into the Bundesliga; every team in the country, big & small, plays each other in a months-long tournament, and the top two teams face off in Berlin the week after the Bundesliga season ends. It's always actually a bittersweet affair, as it's usually the final appearance for one or two players on the team, as they get ready to move on to "new challenges", as European players always put it when they want to leave & join bigger clubs.
And this season RB Leipzig will be losing several players, including one of my favorites, Christopher Nkunku, who last year was named Bundesliga player of the year and who this season led the league in scoring despite missing almost a third of the year to injury. When you're that good, Premiere League teams (the English squads with all the money) come calling, and rumor has him moving from a highly successful German team to a British club that finished in 11th place and is beset by turmoil.
It's not a choice I would make, but what do I know, right?
So after tomorrow there won't be soccer to watch on TV for a few months. But that's okay; after all, this is the time of the year when you don't want to be in front of a TV screen but would rather be playing the game outside in the warm sunshine. But still--there's always that quick moment of melancholy when you realize that the season, which began with you in the stands of a German stadium, is now relegated to the history books.
Call it the soccer "circle of life", I guess.
Have a great weekend. And go RB Leipzig!!
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