Talking Fussball

It's not every week Bundesliga fans witness Bayern slip up and lose to a side in the relegation zone - and see the Rekordmeister's main challenger win to keep the pressure up. But dang if Augsburg and Dortmund each played their parts and pulled it off. Thanks to that - and perhaps a self-inflicted case of COVID knuckle-headery on Säbener Strasse, a fresh wind of competition now blows through the B...

Welcome back! Just in time to get you ready for the Bundesliga re-start after the international break (and to recount the boys' Karneval get-ups), TF Fantasy is here with a new episode! Listen in as JT and Flo give you all the tips you need to rebuild your team while transfers are still unlimited, as well as what line-ups are likely to give you the best chance for the most points on a potentially...

Hard to ask for much more from a match day than what we got from round 11. A couple of heavyweight clashes - Bayern-Freiburg and Leipzig-Dortmund - that stayed close on the scoreboard even if not in the balance of play, and a string of games with major plot twists in the final few minutes of action. Matt sits down with Matthew Marshall, who's been all over the country this week reporting for Get G...

Lots of intriguing match-ups on tap on Match Day 11 - and lots of opportunities to take a flutter on some long shots ahead of another unlimited transfer window (when you can clean up whatever mess you might make). Listen in as JT and Flo guide you through all the best picks for the weekend... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Are you ready to Aufsteigen? We hope so, because Nik, Maik and Jasmine are ready with an update on the 2. Bundesliga and lower leagues. Among the topics: St. Pauli are still riding high, but didn't quite get the late win in Bremen they thought they did for a moment; HSV shake up the spelling on their shirts for a positive reason; Hannover 96 fans aren't too keen on their club's Covid-19 ticketing...

Whenever FC Bayern München lose big, there's bound to be fallout. This last stinger, a 5-0 reverse against Borussia Mönchengladbach in the cup, generated plenty of headlines, and on Bundesliga Match Day 10, plenty of headaches for 1. FC Union Berlin. Listen in as Matt talks through Bayern's unexpectedly humbling week, Eintracht's grand larceny, and Wolfsburg's rebuilt transmission with Lewis Ambro...

Have you heard about blind football? It's a little different from the game we all know so well, but it's a way for people with severe visual impairments to get a chance to play the beautiful game. Blind football has made deep inroads in Germany, with many of the country's biggest clubs fielding a team, as you'll find out as Nik talks to his Aufstieg edition pal Maik Krükemeier. Learn more about yo...

Mark van Bommel, we hardly knew ye. No really, we only got to see you coach VfL Wolfsburg for nine games before you got the sack. Seems a bit harsh after a loss to SC Freiburg (which could happen to anyone these days), but that's the nature of the business. Matt rounds up Matthew Marshall, who's been doing plenty of ground-hopping lately, to get his thoughts on teams from around the league. Accord...

Welcome to the first week following unlimited transfers - a time to get used to your line-up decisions and circumscribed purchase options taking on a bit more importance. On a weekend with relatively few marquee matchups between elite sides, it's well worth weighing up each fixture to figure out where the best values lie. Listen in as JT and Flo do precisely that. Learn more about your ad choices....

When other podcasts go high, we here at Talking Fussball Extra go low. In another Aufstieg edition, Nik Wilhagen convenes his crack panel of Jasmine Baba and Maik Krükemeier for a lower league chat. Where do 2. Bundeliga newcomers FC Schalke and Werder Bremen stand, 10 games in? How the hell did St. Pauli bust loose in Heidenheim and how long can they stay on top? And what stories have been roilin...

Sometimes a team puts in a performance reminiscent of an avalanche - one whose sheer power and unstoppability feels so like a force of nature that their opponent seems unlucky to be the ones standing in the way. Such was FC Bayern München's first half in Leverkusen on MD8, a performance well worth waxing lyrical over. Join Matt and Terry for a bit of that hot wax, as well as Dortmund's sunny new o...

Club football's only been on pause for a week and a half, but already our pundits are reaping the benefits of a wee pause in the action. We're still in the midst of an unlimited transfer period, so there's plenty of time to overhaul your squad before Match Day 8 kicks off on Friday. Listen in as JT and Flo weigh up the benefits and costs involved in all sorts of decisions surrounding some tasty ma...

An episode where we ponder a few questions with one of football media's great ponderers. What's driven little SC Freiburg to the top four this season? Will the club start thinking bigger now that they've moved into a brnd new stadium? What makes the club so preternaturally steady? Matt and Jon Mackenzie mull over these questions and more, as well as get to the bottom of what make Jon fall so hard...

After seven match days in the 2021-22 Bundesliga season, Bayer 04 Leverkusen are flying high. We've seen this kind of early success from the Pharmaceuticals before of course, only to see it melt away, but this time fells like things might be different. Listen in as Nik sits down with Eric Bruehl, host of the Neverkusen podcast, about the big changes new coach Gerardo Seoane has made in the team's...

As a Bundesliga-centric podcast, we here at Talking Fussball love all Bundesliga match days...just some more than others. MD7 was irresistible: a robust 3.4 goals-per-game average, two bicycle kick goals, and three come-from-behind wins - including one from Eintracht Frankfurt in FC Bayern München's Allianz Arena, a venue at which the eagles had literally never won. So Matt had more than a little...

Will he or won't he? He's a walking fantasy bonanza and he's been out of the lineup lately...but for how long? Can you afford to sell Haaland, at least until the unlimited transfers period in the international break? Listen in as JT and Flo address this pressing issue and many more ahead of Match Day 7. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lots of change in the second tier. We're just eight games in and already four sides - Erzgebirge Aue, SV Sandhausen, Holstein Kiel and FC Ingolstadt - have parted ways with their coaches. Listen in as Nik WIldhagen, Jasmine Baba and Maik Krükemeier weigh in on each and attempt to diagnose what could right the ship. The gang then explain why it was that fourth-tier 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig's attemp...

The Bundesliga's twin towers, FC Bayern München and Borussia Dortmund, each stumbled into some 10-man adversity for half of a game of football, give or take. Only one managed to survive the ordeal and come away with a three-point haul. Matt and Terry get into the details of how it all went down and what we can learn from Gladbach's win (and Fürth's loss). They also pay a little tribute to SC Freib...

We all had ideas about who to buy going into the season. We had ideas about who to play after the first week or two. Now, with five match days in the books, we know a few things moving forward. Bayern are such a shot (and goal) machine that it makes some of their expensive players seem affordable, Cologne's Anthony Modeste is a good value pick-up, and Freiburg defenders might be worth a flutter. L...

After years of resistance and denial, some in football are beginning to wake up: plenty of players take performance-enhancing drugs. That has big implications for the sport, but one of the most pressing problems isn't what you think - many footballers are mis-using legal drugs to help them with pain. Non-Steroidal Anti Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs) like Ibuprofen are given out "like smarties" by foo...

Round about five o'clock on Saturday afternoon, the Bundesliga was having a bad day. Just fifteen minutes remained in the afternoon's slate of matches, and not only had seven of the eight teams in action failed to score (snooze), but also the one team that had scored - champions for the last nine years and counting FC Bayern München - had already put six past their hapless opponents on their way t...

With all the UEFA competitions under way, the games are coming thick and fast for more than a third of the teams in the Bundesliga. And while you might wish you could copy-and-paste Christopher Nkunku's numbers from this week's Champions League game in Manchester, it doesn't quite work that way. Listen in as JT and Flo provide you with strategies for dealing with squad rotation, lopsided match-ups...

Ready to dig into some stories from the lower rungs of German football? Nik Wildhagen sits down with Jasmine Baba and Maik Krükemeier for a good hour's chat about the highest-impact transfers in the 2. Bundesliga, the unsettling persistence of SV Sandhausen, and much more from the 3 Liga, Regionalligen and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It was the Saturday we'd been waiting for all week - one with not one but two mouth-watering fixtures featuring four of the Bundesliga's top teams. The first was tasty indeed - the second lacked balance. Listen in as Matt talks with his old pal Ronan Murphy about BVB's stirring victory in Leverkusen, Leipzig's surrender at home to FC Bayern, all the Bundesliga sides' prospects in Europe, and which...

The subject of unlimited transfers came up in the course of our last episode - many of you are likely to have made a few moves to re-make your squads in the meantime. After you listen to JT and Flo's advice, you might need to make a few more. With two colossal clashes taking place this Saturday - Bayer 04 Leverkusen vs Borussia Dortmund and RB Leipzig vs FC Bayern München - you'll really want to h...