Why Werder Bremen's season really starts this weekend | OneFootball

For every club in the Bundesliga, the 2025/26 season started about a month ago. This past weekend was the league’s fifth matchday, and the standings are filling out quite nicely. You can already tell the quality of some sides.

However, for Werder Bremen, their campaign hasn’t really kicked off quite yet. That will finally happen this Saturday.

Trial by fires

Die Werderaner were handed an absolutely brutal opening schedule.

Their first game was away to Eintracht Frankfurt, who ended last season in 3rd. They’re simply further ahead in their development as a team, and it showed as they ran out 4-1 winners. Bremen were then given an opponent one better, with runners-up Bayer Leverkusen coming to the Weserstadion. That game was a strange one, and the hosts managed to steal a point at the death.

Werder were given some respite when they got to travel to a struggling Borussia Mönchengladbach outfit. They made the most of the opportunity, blowing the opposition out 4-0. However, they were back to facing giants soon after.

Freiburg made a visit, and even though the final scoreline was quite harsh on the Green-Whites, they fell 0-3 to a team that’s more experienced at the moment. What horrors awaited the club next? Only a trip to the Allianz Arena to take on a Bayern Munich side that’s flying high. That match ended 4-0.

So, from the opening five games, Bremen played three sides in the Champions League and another team that's in the Europa League. That’s a tough draw to say the very least, and most clubs would definitely struggle out the gate. While some of the performances should have been better, you can’t blame them too much for only securing four points.

Time to gel

For Werder, this was especially rough considering the amount of change they went through in the offseason.

The biggest one was at head coach. Ole Werner was let go, while Horst Steffen quickly came in to replace him. They have strikingly different styles, and that goes beyond the shift from a back three to a back four. Steffen has certain patterns of play he wants to see from his team, and when it works, it’s very pretty.

That kind of change takes time to adjust to, though. Everyone is in a new spot, and their teammates are in different places than they used to be. It’s a big shift. You can have as many training sessions and preseason games as you want, you won’t be able to understand how the new system truly works until competitive matches begin. Having to learn on the job against some of the Bundesliga’s best is a borderline impossible task.

It’s not only the tactics that are new. There are a number of new faces at the Weserstadion. Academy graduate Mio Backhaus became the number #1 after the departure of Michael Zetterer. He started the first four league matches of the season before picking up an injury, with Arsenal loanee Karl Hein currently filling in during his absence

In front of him is another youngster, 18-year-old Karim Coulibaly. He had to make his debut following a defensive injury crisis, which also set the stage for new signing Yukinari Sugawara to be thrust in at right back. The midfield is about the same, but that’s not true further up the pitch.

Samuel Mbangula was the big money signing this summer, and he’s shown plenty of promise so far. However, this is his first season as a focal point in the team, so there’s a lot more growing left to do. Then there are the two deadline day acquisitions, Cameron Puertas and Victor Boniface.

The former got to start right away, while the latter still hasn’t returned to full fitness. They’re both very talented players, but Puertas has been playing in the Belgian and Saudi leagues, not quite the highest level. Boniface has Bundesliga success on his CV, but there are questions about his attitude and health.

So, you’ve got a brand new coach, several new players who haven’t interacted with each other, and you have them play against a murderer’s row of opponents. You can predict what happens next.

A new dawn

Fortunately for Werder, their schedule has finally eased up. There are no easy games in the top-flight, of course, but some matches are certainly more winnable than others.

It begins this weekend. They host St. Pauli, who started the campaign hot but dropped their last two contests. They’re a solid outfit, and everyone knows how difficult they can be to play against, but they don’t possess the same raw talent as the elite.

Die Werderaner then go on the road to take on Heidenheim. They only stayed up last season thanks to a stoppage-time winner in the relegation-playoff, and they’re currently in the bottom two, even if they just beat Augsburg.

The next three opponents, Union Berlin, Mainz, and Wolfsburg, are in 11th, 14th, and 12th as things stand. Those are three teams Bremen have beaten in the past, and they know they can beat them again if they play at their best.

It’d be crazy for supporters to expect 15 points out of a potential 15. However, there’s reason to believe the Green-Whites can absolutely go on a run here. They’ve proven to be a streaky sort of club in years past, and this seems like the time of year they get hot.

If they can, they’ll shoot up the league table, and the European dream will be firmly back on. If Werder fail to pick up a few wins here, however, then fans will have real reason to worry. These are the teams they have to go past if they want to return to where they used to be.

We will learn a lot more about Bremen in these next few weeks than we did learn in the opening month of the campaign.