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Bavaria’s finest Dutchmen against the Italian team without Italians

This Saturday, 22nd May, Bayern Munich will be playing in the Champions League final against Inter Milan. Yes, you read right: on a Saturday! It’s unusual, what with Wednesday tending to be the day for European football – but the marketing whizzes from UEFA will no doubt have noticed that Saturday is far better for viewing figures. And we all know that bad TV ratings are a sure way to destroy a good competition.

Rollercoaster match: Schalke vs Hamburg

Two nil up at half-time – Hamburg were cruising. Playing away to Schalke, the team from northern Germany looked confident with goals coming from a well-worked first goal finished off by forward Marcus Berg and the second from a dipping free-kick from German international Piotr Trochowski.

Schalke keeper Manuel Neuer fished the ball out of the net only for the referee to blow the half-time whistle, leaving the 61,000 sell-out crowd to ponder a likely thrashing over beers and bratwurst.

A thrashing it wasn’t. Schalke staged a comeback and set themselves up to win the match. The first goal came from a cross from the right of the box with forward Kevin Kuranyi beating his marker to head the ball into the goal off the inside of the post.

Crazy season culminates in Wolfsburg championship

Wolfsburg celebrate championship. Photo: picture-alliance / Defodi  If you had tipped VfL Wolfsburg for the Bundesliga title at the beginning of the season, you would have been declared crazy. If you had been crazy enough to put money on it, you would have been, well, crazy rich. Even Wolfsburg’s coach Felix Magath admitted that before the season he never would have thought that “Wolfsburg have a chance to be German champions.” But on Saturday Wolfsburg won the championship for the first time in their history; sending players and fans absolutely crazy as they all danced around the pitch in a beer-soaked, chaotic frenzy.

VfL Wolfsburg take gigantic step towards the title

Scoreboard in HannoverAt 15:30, when all the Bundesliga games kicked off on Saturday, the title race was talked up as a four-way battle. Anything could happen. It was, after all, the most exciting title tussle in Europe. But at 17:20, when all the matches were over, it seemed crazy to have thought that any team other than Wolfsburg could win this year’s Bundesliga title. VfL Wolfsburg had just destroyed Hannover 96 5-0 away from home. With the other results going their way, they opened up a two-point gap at the top of the league meaning they need only to draw at home against Bremen next weekend to clinch the championship.

Four-team title race keeps excitement high in the Bundesliga

Dante heads winner against CottbusImagine an exiting football season. Now double that excitement. And now add a mind-boggling plotline à la Lost. Not even close. This Bundesliga season is simply incomprehensibly and inconceivably incredible. So incredible, in fact, that after a rollercoaster ride of a season, with just two games left to play; four teams at the top are separated by just two points.

As usual, we began the season knowing Bayern Munich would win all along. But then we toyed with the idea that hyper-hyped newbies 1899 Hoffenheim could do it. They were top at the half way point, played great football, but proceeded to drop quicker than Christiano Ronaldo in the penalty area. Then when Bundesliga dinosaurs Hamburg went top, we thought they could win it too.