Best first half record
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FC Bayern Munich set a new Bundesliga record on Wednesday with their away win at 1. FC Köln: Never has a team in the history of the German upper house been in a better position at the end of the first half of the season after 17 match days. Although Vincent Kompany’s team has the same number of points with 47 points as Pep Guardiola’s Munich star ensemble in the 2013/14 season – Harry Kane, Michael Olise, Luis Díaz and Co. scored significantly more and by far the most goals overall.
Bayern coach Kompany had presented himself modestly in the run-up to the game in the cathedral city in view of the record mark. “I don’t want to compare myself, it’s impossible to compare yourself with Pep. It’s a lost battle right from the start,” the Belgian said and passed on the laurels to his protégés, who had an almost perfect first series with 15 wins and two draws: “That’s not my points tally, that’s that of the players! It’s the players who did it. It’s the players who score the goals. I understand that quite well and that’s why I don’t want mine Comparing records doesn’t matter to me at all.” With the previous 8-1 win against Wolfsburg, Kompany’s 50th game for Munich, the coach had entered the best list of the top 5 leagues.
The previous record after 17 Bundesliga matchdays was held by the Bayern team from 2013/14, coached by Guardiola. With a 2-1 win at VfB Stuttgart, the then reigning Champions League winners around Mario Götze, Toni Kroos, Thiago Alcántara and Philipp Lahm achieved 47 points. In the following two seasons, the Bavarians also narrowly missed this record, scoring 45 points in 2014/15 and 46 points in 2015/16 under the Spaniard’s aegis.
In the ranking of the ten best first half teams in Bundesliga history, there are only two teams that were not FC Bayern. Bayer 04 Leverkusen achieved a record of 14 wins and three defeats in the double season under coach Xabi Alonso, who was recently fired from Real Madrid in 2023/24, which corresponded to 45 points.
In the 2010/11 season, eventual champions Borussia Dortmund had 43 points (14 wins, one draw, two defeats). Despite a 0-1 defeat at Eintracht Frankfurt, Jürgen Klopp’s team finished the first half of the season ten points ahead of second-placed Mainz 05, followed in the table by Bayer 04 Leverkusen, Hannover 96 and FC Bayern in fifth place.