By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Image Supplied.
The second half of the Bundesliga season gets underway with in-form Eintracht Frankfurt, firmly seated in third place, hosting an out-of-sorts Borussia Dortmund in Friday’s Matchday 18 curtain-raiser.
Frankfurt completed the first leg of the 2024-25 German top-flight campaign – known locally as the Hinrunde – with a comprehensive 4-1 dismissal of SC Freiburg. The Eagles’ second successive win in 2025 followed a run of three matches without a victory and reinforced their hold on third place in the table.
Omar Marmoush continued his superb season with his 15th goal of the campaign and an assist – to take him to a league-leading nine – in the victory, and Dino Toppmöller’s men will fancy their chances of avenging their 2-0 opening-day loss to Dortmund with their opponents stumbling. Nuri Şahin’s side were surprisingly beaten 4-2 by Holstein Kiel on Tuesday – their second successive league reverse in a run of just one win in six top-flight outings – to complete their worst Hinrunde since 2014-15 and go into the second half of the season down in 10th place.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen maintained their impressive charge thanks to Alejandro Grimaldo’s goal that defeated surprise top-five challengers 1. FSV Mainz 05. That gave the reigning Bundesliga champions a seventh straight league win – and a 10th consecutive success in all competitions – to leave them comfortably in second place ahead of their Rhine derby with Borussia Mönchengladbach in Saturday’s late kick-off.
The Foals will hope to pick themselves up following their 5-1 thumping at a resurgent VfL Wolfsburg, who have won six of their last eight. The Wolves face a tough task maintaining that form in Munich where league leaders FC Bayern München await, fresh from a 5-0 trouncing of TSG Hoffenheim. The second five-goal haul for Vincent Kompany’s men in just three games – all of them wins – maintained their four-point lead at the top, while Harry Kane’s penalty in that game lifted him a strike clear of Marmoush in the Bundesliga scoring charts.
Fourth-placed RB Leipzig head to bottom side VfL Bochum 1848 on Saturday aiming to keep ahead of VfB Stuttgart, who moved to within a point of Die Roten Bullen with a 2-1 victory over them in midweek. The pair both play on Saturday afternoon in Germany with Stuttgart facing a south-west derby with Freiburg.
Kiel’s surprise win – only their third victory of the season – left them second from bottom but now within three points of the three teams directly above them. The northerners host 16th-placed Hoffenheim on Saturday while the other two clubs level on points with them, 1. FC Heidenheim 1846 and FC St. Pauli, meet at the same time in an important encounter in their respective battles to retain Bundesliga status.
While Pauli lost 1-0 at Bochum in midweek, Heidenheim showed real determination to come from behind three times, grabbing a point with a 3-3 draw at SV Werder Bremen. Ole Werner’s mid-table side bring the curtain down on Matchday 18 when they travel to FC Augsburg on Sunday evening after the side they defeated 2-0 in midweek, 1. FC Union Berlin, host Mainz.
Union are down in 13th and will hope to claim their first points under new coach Steffen Baumgart in order to avoid sliding into further relegation danger.