Bundesliga 2025-26 awards: our players, goal, coach and head loss of the season

A hearty pat on the back to Hoffenheim, the unexpected and unfancied top-four gatecrashers who ultimately couldn’t quite hold on. This season has been all about Bayern, though, and not just in the normal they-always-win-it way. To call them the most beloved Bayern team in a generation would be overcooking it – the club will never be universally loved, and fair enough – but Vincent Kompany’s team were not just a behemoth but an absolute joy to watch, not only irresistible but endlessly entertaini

So much of the club’s change of image, as a team at least, is down to Kompany, a humble and emotionally intelligent coach who gives Bayern all the regal flow of their best teams down the years – but with added humility. To some it may seem bizarre not to crown Kane the player of the year after a 61-goal season in all competitions. But stellar as he has been, this column would argue Olise has been Bayern’s brightest star. His debut season in Bavaria was excellent but this was something else – 15 goals and 21 assists in only 23 starts in the league – with another five goals and six assists in the Champions League. The numbers don’t really do Olise’s majesty justice, though. He glides past opponents and sets Bayern’s tempo, while his shooting and passing is deadly accurate from just about anywhere. That the Paris Saint-Germain manager, Luis Enrique, instructed his goalkeeper, Matvey Safonov, to boot the ball out of play for a Bayern throw-in during the Champions League semi-final second leg to crowd Olise’s flank, inhibiting the space the Frenchman could find, showed what an all-consuming threat he has become. In any other season it would be Saïd El Mala, the 19-year-old having taken the top flight by storm after Köln’s promotion. Dribbling with confidence and directness from the left, he was a goal threat too, scoring 13 and laying on another five in a struggling side. That led to a Germany call-up in the autumn – and those numbers surely would have been higher had the coach, Lukas Kwasniok, not left him on the bench fairly frequently. Props too to Leipzig’s Yan Diomande, who scored a dozen goals in a jaw-dropping first Bundesliga season. Yet our winner is a loan player, with Luka Vuskovic perhaps the biggest influence on the other promoted team, Hamburg, who sailed to mid-table safety after seven years away.

Key points

• So much of the club’s change of image, as a team at least, is down to Kompany, a humble and emotionally intelligent coach who gives Bayern all the regal flow of their best teams down the years – bu…
• To some it may seem bizarre not to crown Kane the player of the year after a 61-goal season in all competitions.
• But stellar as he has been, this column would argue Olise has been Bayern’s brightest star.
• His debut season in Bavaria was excellent but this was something else – 15 goals and 21 assists in only 23 starts in the league – with another five goals and six assists in the Champions League.
• The numbers don’t really do Olise’s majesty justice, though.