by Olaf Goldbecker
A little warmup for the 2014 portion of the Bundesliga season took place since the middle of February.
Wolfsburg and Cloppenburg were the first to test the conditions after a mild winter and the powerhouse Wolfsburg side easily collected a 4-1 win. The champion could not manage to take advantage of the gained playing time in the following top games. The key battle at top ranked Frankfurt ended in a scoreless draw, afterwards Wolfsburg even lost 3-1 at Bayern München, which made the Wolves suffer a little gap in the standings.
The top place in the Bundesliga still belongs to FFC Frankfurt. After the Wolfsburg draw, they defeated Freiburg 3-0. The profiting team on top was Turbine Potsdam with a 2-1 win at Bayern München and a 2-0 win at Jena. In the current standings, Frankfurt leads with 30 points, one point ahead of Potsdam. Wolfsburg is trailing four points behind Potsdam while Munich is in fourth place at 21 points.
The middle of the standings are led by FF USV Jena with 17 points, followed by MSV Duisburg at 16. MSV is no spelling mistake as the traditional men’s team MSV Duisburg took over the club from FCR Duisburg and saved their license, otherwise FCR Duisburg would have folded. SGS Essen and Bayer Leverkusen both sit at 15 points – midfield rankings as of now, but there is not a lot safety as this year a much higher number of points might be needed for teams to avoid relegation.
The direct relegation endangered area is led by SC Freiburg with 13 points. SCF won a key game at Cloppenburg 2-1, before losing to Frankfurt. Now out of the relegation spots is TSG Hoffenheim. First they lost 4-1 to Jena but then Sindelfingen was defeated 5-0, which sees TSG climb to 11 points. Cloppenburg now is down to the first relegation spot with the two suffered loss after the break. Still the individually strong roster does not find a way to match together. As good as relegated is VfL Sindelfingen with 1 point this season and a ratio of two goals scored to 62 goals conceded.
The Bundesliga resumes on March 16 after the conclusion of the Algarve Cup in Portugal.