Is it me or german club seem to have tougher time than any other club in Europe? I mean, yeah, Bayern barely lost a game but both Leipzig and Dortmund have had trouble in the group stage and among the remaining team playing in Europe, the only teams to win by a margin of a single goal were Bayern (2-1 in CL vs Sevilla) and Leipzig (1-0 in Europa vs Marseille). Not saying it mean a lot but I don't, it could be those team are a bit more inconsistent (make sense for Leipzig with their young team) or that they have harder time than other team to adapt to other country playing style? What do you guys think? Is there a point in asking ourselve this or are the recent performance just a coincidence?

Not sure tho, if you look at the transfer window, most clubs have tight budget except bayern. I mean the bundesliga as a whole have a very strong home grown culture. which explain why their national team is so strong. however, not all generations are best, probably some downfall due to selling players and finding a new homegrown replacement. tactical wise a lot of great play in bundesliga. also the reason why if you see the club participating in europe have not been consistent. wolfsburg, stuttgart, werder bremen, schalke and leverkusen used to be in ucl and europa. rising club on the other hand like hoffenheim and leipzig is replacing them.

@thebaldgenius Yeah, the league in itself is alway changing in bundesliga. Some team that used to be third or fourth and now much lower and team that used to be low in the league table are now fighting for third and fourth player. Its crazy how manager and certain player influence whole team in Bundesliga. Take Kevin Prince Boateng and Frankfurt, they have had a great season and are 6th with only 3 point behind Dortmund who are third. The year before that, they ended 11th and the year before that, they were 16th and made the relegation play-offs. That speak volume of how quickly team change in Germany.

The biggest upset was Leipzig, Dortmund had Tottenham and Madrid si an early elemination can be understandable. I think it’s a Dortmund case not a German, because Leverkusen, Wolfsburg and co used to advice only when the draw was favorable. Dortmund were eliminating top clubs reaching the final...
Dortmund is not as strong as before, it’s an expectable situation to see only Bayern in Semifinals.

I dont really enjoy watching German teams in Europe, in general, despite acknowledging that they are strong.

I just dislike so much the imbalance in German league where Bayern year in year out bought the best players from direct opponents. The league become so irrelevant in so many way :(.

And it's really boring too. :(

@tiki Dortmund still managed to draw against APOEL though... twice. :(

@tuan_jinn Yeah, in term of top spot finish, its the most boring league between the top 5 european one. At least, the fight for the CL spot is interesting in it own way so there is alway that at least. ;)

Well, several problems are there:

• Most of clubs aren't financially that strong, so they can't really make much improvement season to season.
• 50+1 rule will probably remain, ironically that only Bayern and few others teams were against it, while it has more cons for smaller teams than for us.
• Most of clubs are on turning point and a lot of them have young managers.
• Most of clubs play really, really boring football (except us, Dortmund on occasions, Leipzig and sometimes Bayer or Hoffenheim)
• Most of clubs can't keep their talents.
• Some of clubs have extremely retarded boards and they waste their transfer funds while not employing good managers (looking at you HSV)
• Literally all of teams are inconsistent.

But there are good sides too:

• Race for spots other than 1st one is very tight and amongst the best.
• German league always had a ton of young players.
• Some of best fans and largest fanbases in the world.
• Young managers everywhere, Tedesco is 32, Herrlich 46, Kovač 46, Nagelsmann 30, Dardai 42, Baum 38, Kohfeldt 35...

but both Leipzig and Dortmund have had trouble in the group stage and among the remaining team playing in Europe, the only teams to win by a margin of a single goal were Bayern (2-1 in CL vs Sevilla) and Leipzig (1-0 in Europa vs Marseille).

Leipzig's one is reasonable, it is their first season in the European competitions and second season in Bundesliga, I never expected them to reach this level so fast. Borussia on other hand went really downhill since hiring Bosz and it was really unlucky knowing Bosz is actually decent coach but failed to change tactics (kinda like Zidane early in the season, not even worse much).

Is there a point in asking ourselve this or are the recent performance just a coincidence?

No coincidence. Bundesliga is still old-style and doesn't want to adapt. Sooner or later only mediocre players will play here if they don't accept changes.

@tuan,

I just dislike so much the imbalance in German league where Bayern year in year out bought the best players from direct opponents. The league become so irrelevant in so many way :(.

Yeah I don't wanna go around saying that is a lie but where else to buy players? In Bundesliga we can buy almost any player that would come cheaper and still be better than some other players in other leagues. Also Dortmund does just the same but no one cares because the victims are clubs like Freiburg.

We've outgrown the league standards by far, or should I say league standards dropped by far. We don't have competition since Jupp won treble and if they don't start fixing it now, they never will.

@Croatian I agree completely, to be fair, Bayern doesn't only try to competetive in Germany either, they also target CL so they need to be smart when recruiting because if we are being sincere, I doubt they have the ressource to compete with some other team like Real and the two Manchester in term of money. Beside, big english team also pry player from weaker side in their league and sometime for cheap amount. At least they used to. XD