Welcome to the Bundesliga Briefing, which, for a change, is beginning down in the third tier 3.Liga with one of the best double saves of the season.
This is Alemannia Aachen’s Fotis Pseftis during his team’s victory over MSV Duisburg:
Pseftis is a 23-year-old former Greece youth international, playing on loan from Lugano in Switzerland. His saves may prove deeply significant in the wider context of the season.
They helped preserve a 2-1 lead — the seventh-placed hosts eventually ran out 3-1 winners — over Duisburg, who missed the chance to move into the promotion places.
More promotion news: Sunday afternoon in 2.Bundesliga saw first-placed Schalke travel to Paderborn, in second, protecting a three-point gap at the top of the table.
After 26 minutes, that lead was vanishing.
Paderborn were 2-0 up and in the live table, the sides were level on 61 points. Given everything that Schalke have endured over the past decade — two relegations, authored by all sorts of coaching, managerial and financial dysfunction — the creeping sense of doom must have felt terribly familiar.
Schalke have been in the second tier since 2023, finishing 14th and 10th in the past two years without even threatening promotion. This season has been completely different.
Miron Muslic was appointed in the summer following his acrimonious departure from Plymouth Argyle, and the Bosnian has built an incredibly consistent, tough team that, unlike its predecessors, responds well to adversity.
Miron Muslic has overseen Schalke’s drive towards promotion this season (Christof Koepsel/Getty Images)
Loris Karius and January arrival Edin Dzeko have been cornerstones of this resurgence. Fellow veteran Kenan Karaman, a 32-year-old Turkish midfielder, has produced an archetypal captain’s season, top-scoring (13 goals) and showing — again — what an excellent player he is at this level. Nikola Katic, a mountain of a defender, all elbows and sharp edges, was terrific before suffering a season-ending injury during Bosnia and Herzegovina’s World Cup qualification win over Italy.
There have been many more notable performances, as there have needed to be. The 2.Bundesliga is no joke. It’s full of banana skins, so being a historically big club guarantees nothing. Hamburg spent seven years trying to get out of that league and kept finding new ways to flounder.
But Schalke are nearly there.
By half-time on Sunday, they had pulled the game back to 2-2. Then, with eight minutes left, Dejan Ljubicic scored the winner that should — should — now make promotion a formality.
It leaves Schalke seven points clear of third-place Hannover, in the play-off place, knowing that a win against Fortuna Dusseldorf next Saturday night would confirm their place back in the top flight.
If they do come back, keep an eye out for a couple of their younger players.
Former Sunderland attacking midfielder, 23, should be able to handle the step up to the higher division. So should Soufiane El-Faouzi, also 23, who plays deeper and is more combative, but is no less talented. He will surely be a big part of whatever Schalke can do next season.
Should El-Faouzi and Schalke go up, he will complete quite a journey. His career began with Sportfreunde Siegen all the way down in the Oberliga Westfalen, the fifth tier of German football. He only needs this promotion to have featured in each of the country’s top five divisions.
Who will take Schalke’s place if they go up? The Bundesliga’s relegation battle might go to the final day.
Heidenheim had to beat St Pauli on Saturday or their relegation would have been confirmed. They did, winning 2-0 at Voith-Arena. Wolfsburg missed the chance to fully capitalise on St Pauli’s defeat, drawing 0-0 with Borussia Monchengladbach.
The results leave St Pauli in 16th and in the relative sanctuary of the play-off place, with Wolfsburg one point behind and Heidenheim still bottom, four points further back.
There are three games left, so nine points left to play for.
At the other end of the table, Hoffenheim’s 2-1 win in Hamburg has them back in fifth, which could yield a Champions League place, depending on the coefficient rankings. They are only behind Stuttgart (who drew 1-1 with Werder Bremen) on goal difference, while Bayer Leverkusen beat Koln 2-1 in the Rhein derby, leaving them two points behind in sixth.
Borussia Dortmund confirmed their Champions League qualification for next season with a thumping 4-0 win over Freiburg.
Congratulations to 16-year-old Mathis Albert, who came on as a late substitute for Dortmund and became the youngest American to play in the Bundesliga, beating Gio Reyna’s record. Albert was born in South Carolina and has represented the United States up to the under-19s.
He is among a clutch of young players (including 18-year-olds Italians Samuele Inacio and Luca Reggiani) for whom the club have really high hopes, so this should — fingers crossed — be the start of something for the midfielder.
Mathis Albert became the youngest American to feature in the Bundesliga (Ronny Hartmann/AFP via Getty Images)
RB Leipzig are nearly assured of a Champions League place themselves after their 3-1 win over Union Berlin on Friday night. It leaves Ole Werner close to completing an impressive turnaround in his first season.
The team he inherited finished only seventh last season and was undermined by a badly fractured dressing room. This year, the club’s entire energy has been different. The recruitment has been part of that — Leipzig bought well and sold the players who needed to leave — but Werner has handled a young squad particularly well, minimising the volatility that was such a feature of their football last season.
Yan Diomande has been exceptional and has evolved at a ridiculous speed. Christoph Baumgartner has had the best season of his career. Willi Orban and David Raum have both returned to their best form under Werner, too.
Hoffenheim host Stuttgart on Saturday, meaning that a win for Leipzig at Leverkusen will guarantee them a top-four finish.
Why did Oliver Mintzlaff, Red Bull’s managing director, watch that Friday night game from a pitchside running machine?
Mintzlaff — and Benjamin Ippoliti, Red Bull’s head of communications — spent the 90 minutes running on treadmills to help promote the annual Wings for Life World Run, which takes place in the second week of May. Wings for Life is a non-profit that supports spinal cord research and has helped raise more than €60million (£52m; $70.5m) since 2014.
As well as promoting the event, Mintzlaff was being sponsored on Friday. For every kilometre he ran, various executives around the organisation — including Jurgen Klopp, Marcel Schaefer and Mario Gomez — had pledged to donate.
Mintzlaff turned 50 last year, but he is a former endurance athlete and managed a very respectable 21.4km (just over a half-marathon/13 miles) during the game, raising a further €100,000.
Hat man so etwas schon mal gesehen in einem Fußballstadion? 😅
Besseren Blick auf den Rasen gibt es ja gar nicht.
Starker Support von Oliver #Mintzlaff 👏
47. Minute | 2:0#RBLFCU #Bundesliga pic.twitter.com/q3PVe8Rc9S
— RB Leipzig (@RBLeipzig) April 24, 2026
Kai Havertz’s injury could be bad news for Arsenal, but there will be repercussions for Germany, too.
Havertz is Julian Nagelsmann’s first-choice forward and, if fit, will surely start as part of a front three with Florian Wirtz and Jamal Musiala at the World Cup. That may still happen; there’s no news yet on how serious the injury is.
But if not, it’s worth considering what the contingency might be.
Niclas Fullkrug is no longer in contention. His moves to West Ham United and Milan have badly degraded the 33-year-old’s stock. Borussia Monchengladbach’s Tim Kleindienst has missed practically the entire season because of a recurring knee injury, meaning that even if the 30-year-old were to return in the final few games, the World Cup seems a long shot.
That leaves Nick Woltemade, whose first season with Newcastle United has not been the easiest, and Stuttgart’s Deniz Undav.
Undav has put together, by far, the better season. Only Harry Kane (33 goals) has scored more than his 18 Bundesliga goals from 26 games and Undav, whose career began with tiny Havelse down in the fourth-tier Regionalliga, has a strong case to be starting for his country. It is a great story, but with a complication: Undav’s relationship with Nagelsmann is not the easiest.
During the last international break, when Germany faced Ghana in Stuttgart, the crowd at the Neckarstadion spent much of the evening chanting for Undav’s introduction from the bench. He came on late, grabbed the winner in a 2-1 victory, and everyone went home happy.
Sort of.
Nagelsmann was asked about Undav’s smart finish following the game. But rather than focus on the well-taken goal, he made a rather cryptic remark that was interpreted — rightly or wrongly — as a dig at Undav.
“If he had been running for 70 minutes beforehand,” he said in a press conference afterwards, “then I don’t know if he’d put it away like that. It was a long step, which, after 70 minutes — also considering the 42C (108F) summer heat (at the World Cup in North America) — could be difficult for him.”
Could Deniz Undav step in for Kai Havertz with the German national team? (Christian Kaspar-Bartke/Getty Images)
It was a strange thing to say and it fostered an uncertain atmosphere. But the two have made up after some self-reflection from Nagelsmann.
“It wasn’t right and I was far too harsh publicly,” he told Magenta TV last week, before revealing that his wife had helped to talk him into a conciliatory conversation with Undav, during which he apologised.
Undav has confirmed that and insists all is now well between them, but it’s a curious dynamic as the World Cup approaches.