Bundesliga

The German Bundesliga is the highest level of Germany's football league system. It was originally established by the German Football Association and is now operated by the Deutsche Fußball Liga.

German domestic football was initially an amateur league and it became only semi-professional in 1949. Calls for making the German top flight fully professional continued gathering momentum after that. A professional Bundesliga was finally created on July 28,1962 and the 1963-1964 season was the inaugural season of the Bundesliga. The new German league was constructed on the structure of the English league system. Qualifications to the top flight at the time was quite complex but things have become relatively simple since then.

18 teams complete in the German Bundesliga and play one another twice every season, once at home and once away from home. A victory counts as 3 points, a draw as 1 point and a defeat has no point accredited to it. The team that garners maximum points in a season is adjudged as the winners of the Bundesliga for that season.

The top two teams from the Bundesliga move into the UEFA Champions League automatically while the team that finishes third move into the qualifying rounds. The fourth and the fifth placed teams in the German Bundesliga play in the qualifying rounds of the UEFA Cup.

The 17th and 18th place teams in the Bundesliga are automatically relegated from the first division to the second division while the 16th place team have to confront the third place team from the 2nd Bundesliga to sustain their top flight status.