Schalke well positioned
©IMAGO
There are 534 players under contract in the 2nd Bundesliga – 148 of them have a working paper that ends in 2026, 51 have loan contracts. Most of the work could fall on Fortuna Düsseldorf’s new sports director Sven Mislintat, whose squad has 13 contracts expiring that make up 52 percent of the squad’s value. In Darmstadt only three contracts end, while at Schalke there are seven, of which only Ron Schallenberg belongs to a regular employee.
The most valuable second division player who can sign a preliminary contract with a new club from January 1st is Hannover 96’s captain Enzo Leopold with a market value of 3 million euros. In an interview with Transfermarkt in mid-November, the central midfielder said: “My focus is on the season with this team. Of course, as an athlete, I also have personal goals that I want to achieve. But I will think about everything that goes beyond purely sporting things with the team in due course, but not yet.”
In total, there are 21 professionals in the second highest German league with a market value of millions and expiring contracts.
If you are looking for a free-transfer goalscorer, you have to look closely in the second division: Of the currently 20 best scorers, only Paderborn’s Filip Bilbija’s working paper ends in the summer of 2026. With six expiring contracts, the SCP is in the bottom third of the league – however, these six potentially free-free departures and loan returns make up 33.4 percent of the squad value.
VfL Bochum could lose even more quality: twelve players and 54 percent of the squad value are at risk. Of this, 17 million euros go to five loan players, some of whom have little prospect of staying, and 6.7 million euros to seven footballers, most of whom have already played for the Bundesliga. These include Matus Bero, Erhan Masovic and Felix Passlack.
Hannover 96 has nine expiring contracts, including five loans, such as Bayern talent Noel Aseko and Hoffenheim goalkeeper Nahuel Noll, who make up 45 percent of the squad value. Dynamo Dresden has eleven ending working papers and 44 percent of the team value that could leave for free, and Düsseldorf has 13 professionals and 52 percent: including the four longest-serving players Fortunen Matthias Zimmermann, captain Florian Kastenmeier, Shinta Appelkamp and Emmanuel Iyoha.
Holstein Kiel supposedly has the greatest planning security in relation to the squad value: five contracts end there, which make up 10.9 percent of the team value.