5 teams in danger of missing out on Champions League next season
As the summer season looms over us, European football peers into its final stretch of the 2018/19 campaign. With only a handful of games left in the top five leagues, the race towards the finish line is heating up and winners will emerge soon.
Similarly, the race to secure a Champions League place is winding down, though, the challenge is hardly easing up. As many as three teams in the Premier League and LaLiga are vying are for one, whereas scenarios in Serie A and Bundesliga are close too.
However, some big names who have endured a difficult campaign so far, are now running the risk of missing out on a Champions League spot. Let’s look at the top five of them:
#5 TSG 1899 Hoffenheim
Die Kraichgauer’s spectacular renaissance from a mid-table outfit into a Bundesliga powerhouse is among the league’s biggest stories in the recent years.
Having retained their top-flight status by the skin of their teeth in 2016 after finishing 16th and just a point above the drop zone, Hoffenheim have finished within the top four in each of the following two seasons. But after a topsy-turvy campaign this term, that fairytale run is under threat: Hoffenheim are sixth in the table currently and have only five games to close down the six-point gap between fourth-placed Eintracht Frankfurt and themselves.
Even though the last 11 games have yielded just a solitary defeat, Julian Nagelsmann’s side have peaked a bit late. Also the catastrophic first-half of the season which saw them win only five out of 17 games has come home to roost.
But Hoffenheim do have a silver lining here as four of the five teams from their home stretch of the campaign are positioned below them. Only the daunting trip to the Borussia Park to take on Gladbach, who too are fighting fires in their quest for Champions League football, might ruffle a few feathers.
But so erratic has been their season, that Hoffenheim can’t afford to take their foot off the pedal at any point. Squeaky bum time ahead!