Bert Leno, a goalkeeper for English Premier League side Fulham and a former German international, has hit out at the way the Bundesliga is viewed in his home country.
“Leno opened up about the term ‘Farmers’ League,'” soccer media outlet Eurofoot reported on Aug. 8 (Korea time), saying that the Bundesliga is considered a lesser league in England. Farmers’ League means ‘farmers’ league’ and is a derogatory term for a league of so-called ‘two-jobbers’.
Leno played for VfB Stuttgart as a youth player, making the Stuttgart second team in 2009 and Bayer Leverkusen in 2011. He played in Germany until 2018. He has excellent reflexes and well-organized fundamentals, and has made several outstanding saves. He left Leverkusen for Arsenal in 2018 and has been Fulham”s first choice goalkeeper since 2022.
Therefore, Leno believes that the way the Bundesliga is looked down upon in England is unfair: “It’s not appropriate for the Bundesliga to be called the ‘Farmers League’,” he says.
However, people’s perceptions are not changing. “To be honest, everyone calls the Bundesliga that,” Leno says, “This is Premier League country and we don’t really care about the Bundesliga. “To be honest, everyone calls it that,” Leno laments, “This is Premier League country, and no one cares about the Bundesliga.
However, we cannot ignore the fact that there are many players who grew up in the Bundesliga and went on to make a name for themselves in the Premier League. “I think a better term for it would be a developmental league,” says Leno, “Ambitious players usually go to Germany and then go to the Premier League. Kevin De Bruyne, Elling Holland, Ilkay Gundogan, and others are examples.”
“I talk to my Fulham teammates every week about the name Farmers’ League,” Leno said, adding that the Bundesliga is also somewhat neglected by his teammates. As an example, he recounts how earlier this year, Burnley-Luton Town and Bayern Munich-Hofenheim were played on the same day, and his teammates only watched the Burnley-Luton Town game because they were two teams in the relegation zone.
“We were all sitting in the physiotherapy room watching the game. “I wanted to watch Munich, but I couldn’t,” he says. “All my teammates said that there are no funny situations in Bundesliga matches and they’re not interesting. They all said, ‘We don’t watch the Farmers League,'” he confessed.
The Bundesliga is vilified because of its one-dominant system, even though Munich is the only team in the league to have won the triple (league, FA Cup, and Champions League in the same season). In fact, no 안전놀이터 other Bundesliga team has ever been competitive in the Champions League. Only two non-Munich Bundesliga teams have ever reached the Champions League final, in 2002 and 2013, respectively.
Furthermore, Munich has dominated the league for 11 consecutive seasons, winning the league title from the 2012-2013 season to the 2022-2023 season. “It’s very boring and sad,” Leno said of the “Munich one-upmanship,” adding, “I look forward to interesting league competition, but I don’t think there will be any interesting league competition in the near future because Munich is too strong.
This season, however, the Bundesliga has been turned upside down by Leverkusen’s surge under Xabi Alonso.
Leverkusen, the only team in the five major leagues (the top divisions of England, Spain, Germany, France, and Italy) to remain unbeaten in league play this season, leads the table with 52 points, two points clear of second-place Munich (50). Should Leverkusen win the title this season, it would end Munich’s 11-game league losing streak.
“I hope Leverkusen can stop Munich’s dominance this season,” Leno said before the match.