Matchday 1 records and stats

bundesliga.com looks into the history of the Bundesliga's opening weekend to see what trends you should have your eyes on in 2022/23...

• After their 8-0 thumping of Schalke on Matchday 1 of 2020/21, it probably comes as no surprise to learn that Bayern have the strongest opening-day record of all Bundesliga clubs, with an average of over 2.1 points per game.
• Bayern have also won a league-best 36 of their Matchday 1 fixtures, scored a record 134 goals and topped the opening-day table more than any other club (12 times). VfB Stuttgart are next, heading the overall post-Matchday 1 standings on eight occasions.
• Defending champions have won their Matchday 1 fixtures in 33 out of 59 seasons (D14, L12), scoring 132 goals and conceding 71 times.

Watch: Robert Lewandowski was among goals from the start against Gladbach on Matchday 1 of last season

• The team that has finished Matchday 1 in second place has gone on to be relegated more times (seven) than winning the league (six times).
• The Matchday 1 leader has ended the season as champions on 12 occasions, and - statistically - has the best chance of doing so. The third-placed team has triumphed 10 times; only a team that was 11th, 15th or 18th has never gone on to win the title. A 17th-in-the-table team has done so three times, however.
• No champion has ever lost an official opening game, boasting a record of 15 wins and five draws and an aggregate score of 57-17.
• The last team to lose on Matchday 1 but go on to win the title was Borussia Dortmund in 2010/11. They were beaten 2-0 by Bayer Leverkusen.
• The only team to ever beat the defending champions on Matchday 1 and then go on to win the title themselves was Kaiserslautern in 1997/98. They got a 1-0 victory at Bayern as they became the only promoted team to ever win the Bundesliga.
• Bayern had suffered the heaviest opening-day defeat on record when they lost 6-0 away to Kickers Offenbach in 1974/75 (as champions), before beating Werder Bremen by the same scoreline in 2016/17. The Munich club then rewrote the record books in 2020/21 when they smashed Schalke 8-0.
• The heaviest opening-day home defeat for a champion was Nuremberg's 4-1 loss at the hands of Aachen in 1968/69.

Watch: Xabi Alonso scored a veritable rocket as Bayern launched themselves into 2016/17

• A total of 148 teams have been relegated over the course of the past 59 Bundesliga seasons. Around 22 percent of the teams in question began the season with a win; 55 percent avoided defeat.
• Fifty-six of the 148 teams promoted to the Bundesliga since 1964 have suffered an immediate relegation to the second tier (38 per cent).
• Four teams that topped the Matchday 1 standings have been relegated: Hansa Rostock (1991/92), Karlsruhe (1997/98), Borussia Mönchengladbach (1998/99) and Arminia Bielefeld (2002/03).
• On the flip side, 78 teams that occupied a place in the bottom two after Matchday 1 avoided relegation come the end of the season. But 20 teams starting in the bottom two have gone down, while it's 32 teams sitting 16th, 17th or 18th.

• Bayern and Bremen have started more Bundesliga seasons than any other clubs with 57 campaigns each. Hamburg (55) are next on the list.
• Dortmund have suffered more Matchday 1 defeats than any other club (22).
• Bremen have conceded the highest number of Matchday 1 goals (93); Bayern have been involved in games with the most goals (189).
• The record number of Matchday 1 goals fell in 1986/87 (42). By contrast, 15 goals represents the lowest-scoring start to a season (2017/18).
• Klaus Fichtel, Eike Immel, Manfred Kaltz and Karl-Heinz Körbel share the record for most Matchday 1 appearances (17).
• Former Bayern goalkeeper Oliver Kahn was involved in a Bundesliga-best 11 Matchday 1 wins.

• A Bayern player has scored the first goal of a season a league-leading 16 times. Dortmund are next (eight players), followed by Duisburg (four).
• The average record attendance on Matchday 1 was set in 2011 - 51,344 - when Bayern, Dortmund and Hertha were all playing at home.
• Lewandowski has featured in more successive Matchday 1 wins than any player in Bundesliga history (eight from 2011 to 2018).
• It took Union Berlin three seasons to open a Bundesliga campaign with a point. Their 1-1 draw with Leverkusen last season followed a 4-0 loss to Leipzig in their debut match and a 3-1 defeat at home to Augsburg in 2020/21.