🇩🇪 Bundesliga's smallest-ever play-off starts Thursday, all you need to know
This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.
The Bundesliga 24/25 playoff, between Heidenheim and Evelsberg, will decide the last participant of the next season of the German elite.
And you can follow everything, LIVE and FREE, here on !If you don't remember very well how the Relegation works (for the Germans), we'll explain!
The 16th place in the BuLi faces the 3rd place in the 2.Bundesliga, to decide if we will have three clubs relegated in the First Division - or three promotions - next season.
Of the 26 playoffs in the history of German football, 20 were won by the elite team, 77%, according to Bundesliga information.
In the cut of the last 12 playoffs, 11 were won by the team trying to avoid relegation - which makes Heidenheim the favorite in the match, at least, on the side of the statistics.
Heidenheim, with about 50,000 inhabitants, facing Elversberg, with 13,000, represents the "smallest" playoff of all time.
For an idea, last season's playoff, between Bochum and Fortuna Düsseldorf, opposed cities with 372,000 people and 613,000, respectively.
In 2022/23, Stuttgart, with 632,000 inhabitants, escaped relegation against HSV, from Hamburg - the second largest city in Germany, with 1.85 million.
If Elversberg achieves promotion, it will become the smallest team in history to compete in the Bundesliga, being the 59th different club to participate in the German football elite.
They [Heidenheim] have assembled a quality squad that can play in the Bundesliga and the Conference League. They are very flexible and can change during the phases of the game... We will do our best to influence the match with our performance and then we have to hope that the opponent may not be so connected, so that we can take advantage of it.
Elversberg has been on a journey to get to this chance to make history.
In the 2021/22 season, the club was in the Southwest Regionalliga - the fourth division of German football -, and this is only its second season in the 2.Bundesliga.
The team led by Horst Steffen scored 58 points in 34 games, finishing just one point behind the runner-up Hamburg, which went up directly, alongside the champion Cologne.
They scored 64 goals, less only than Cologne, and had the best defense in the Second Division, with 37 conceded.
Only striker Fisnik Asllani scored 18 goals, finishing on the podium of the top scorers, behind Martijn Kaars (19), from Magdeburg, and Davie Selke (22), from HSV.
Heidenheim and Elversberg have only faced each other twice in history, in the 3. Liga of 2013/14.
Heidenheim won once, by 1 x 0, with a draw, at 1 x 1, in the other game of the season.
Frank Schmidt, coach of Heidenheim, Horst Steffen, praised his rival this Thursday, in a recent interview.
For me, [Steffen] is the coach of the year. When I see what he achieved with Elversberg, how he managed to assemble a team that plays such successful football. I have great respect for him. That's why I'm also looking forward to this confrontation, because we can show that we can assert ourselves against them.
Heidenheim surprised in the Bundesliga, less than a year ago, when it debuted in the German elite, finishing in eighth place, with a spot in the Uefa Conference League playoffs.
The dispute in the European competition, however, had a cost in the performance in the Bundesliga.
The club flirted with relegation for much of the season, and needed a surge, already at the end, to secure the playoff.
So, who will be present in the Bundesliga 2025/26?
📸 Christian Kaspar-Bartke - 2025 Getty Images
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