It is the question that gets brought up every year: Should we get rid of the relegation playoff?. At the weekend, a 2.Bundesliga four-team playoff system was mentioned as a possible solution, and now it is time to dive further into the topic.
In 2009, the relegation playoff in its current form was established. Since then, only two 2.Bundesliga sides have been able to overcome their Bundesliga opposition to earn promotion to the top flight – Fortuna Düsseldorf in 2011/12 and Union Berlin in 2018/19.
Two in 15 is not exactly a good sign and shows that this current format is not working.
Whether Elversberg can beat Heidenheim in this season’s edition is yet to be seen.
From a purely sporting point of view, to me, it does not make sense why a team that has performed badly in 34 games should be given an extra two games to turn their season around. The team from the second division, which has played well, has to play a team that is four places ahead of them.
Granted, you could make the argument that if they can’t beat a team in the Bundesliga, do they deserve promotion? However, the strength of the 16th-placed side is usually greater than the sides below them.
That is why there needs to be reform.
It is time to propose the solution, we scrap this playoff and introduce a playoff in a similar format to the Championship in England. This would mean 16th in the Bundesliga automatically goes down, while third to sixth in the 2.Bundesliga will fight it out for promotion.
Now you may say, isn’t an 18-team league too small for this? Well, look at the Bundesliga. Places one to seven have things up for grabs, and in certain scenarios, eighth place as well. This means 44% of the league is fighting for something in the top half. An introduction of a four-team playoff system would give teams more to play for heading into the back end of the season and could make one of the most chaotic leagues in the world even more chaotic, and it would follow a similar pattern to the Bundesliga in terms of league positioning, which means something.
Let’s look at this season as an example:
The playoff semi-finals would then be:
Elversberg vs Fortuna Düsseldorf
Paderborn vs Magdeburg
While heading into the final day, Kaiserslautern, Karlsruhe, and Hannover also had chances of sneaking into the hypothetical playoff spots. This would provide a lot more excitement to the final day, to one that kind of fell flat, except for Hamburg.
Now, I present the argument that with this system, if a team cannot beat a team that finished below them in the league, are they good enough to go up?, a reverse to the current point about the current system.
On top of this, the 2.Bundesliga can easily start a week earlier in the year to schedule and throw in an Englisch woche to allow space for two legs and then a final. The final can also be played at a different stadium compared to the Olympiastadion, whether that be the Rhein Energie Stadion, Volksparkstadion or the Allianz Arena. From a financial perspective, this could also give the teams competing a leg up when getting promoted, as more games equal more revenue and TV money.
A change in the system would also improve the quality of the relegation battle in the Bundesliga, as the 16th-placed side would no longer have a second chance, and it would be life or death (relegation).
Will this happen anytime soon? Probably not, as the Bundesliga teams are unlikely to vote in favour of three teams getting relegated, but it would greatly improve the entertainment quality of the league.
GGFN | Jack Meenan
