The Bundesliga is riding the wave

The 2010/11 domestic German league is being billed as the most eagerly anticipated since the top tier was formed in the early 1960s.

Michael Ballack remains the most recognisable face of German football in the new millennium. He has rejoined Bayer Leverkusen eight years after his last game for them.

Germany has become accomplished at nourishing football's feel-good factor. Much of the energy and optimism gained from the successful hosting of the 2006 World Cup remains, and a concentrated serum has also been added, distilled from the achievements of the national team this summer, when they finished once again among the medal positions at the game's greatest event, and did so with flair.

It is entire coincidence, of course, but as the Germany treasury congratulates itself on economic figures that seem to put the country on a far sounder footing - in what are difficult financial times in Europe - than all of its neighbours to the west, the Bundesliga is also in boastful mood. Some German commentators are wondering out loud if this might even be the most eagerly anticipated campaign since the top tier of the league was formed as a professional structure in the early 1960s.

They do so while reeling off a list of star participants: Michael Ballack, probably the highest-profile German player to have hit his peak in the last decade, is back among the cast, having rejoined - from England's Chelsea - Bayer Leverkusen, his former club. Raul, the former captain of Real Madrid and Spain and his country's record international goalscorer, will line up for Schalke 04. Holland's Ruud Van Nistelrooy, like Raul among the most prolific scorers in the Champions League over the past decade, embarks on his first full season with Hamburg.

And then there are Bayern Munich, the champions and runners-up in the Champions League last May, and home to Arjen Robben and Thomas Muller, possibly the best pair of wide attackers from the World Cup, and to Bastian Schweinsteiger, the midfielder who could practically have walked home from Johannesburg without stepping off the very long red carpet rolled out for him by coaches, critics and fans at the tournament.

But, as any Englishmen would testify, a country's football buoyancy does not necessarily translate from league to national team, or vice-versa. While Bayern's success in reaching the last Champions League final, where they lost 2-0 to Italy's Inter Milan, should not be sneered at, their progress there benefited from some good fortune - refereeing decisions in their favour in the tight knockout ties against Fiorentina and Manchester United - and can scarcely be seen as the fruit of gathering German momentum in the competition. The Bundesliga has points to prove still in European competition: By next May it will have been 10 years since a German club won the European Cup. Bayern's appearance in the final was the first time in eight seasons that a German team had made it that far.

In an age of relative austerity, however, German football, like the German economy, is more robust than many of its peers. Debt is not nearly such a problem, thanks to tighter licensing guidelines by the German federation, as it is for the bolder, more reckless borrowers of Spain's Primera Liga, Italy's Serie A or even England's Premier League. Television income for German clubs, particularly when it comes to international broadcast rights, may be slim in comparison to those others, but attendances are markedly higher across German stadiums each weekend than elsewhere in continental Europe. There is a World Cup legacy.

Ever since Germany reached the World Cup final in 2002 - reversing a worrying decline that had seen the national team fail to reach the semi-finals in the 1994 and 1998 tournaments - the numbers of supporters passing through the turnstiles every weekend has grown year on year. No league, not even the English top-flight, brings more people to watch it live, in situ, than the Bundesliga. Big summer signings help that, and the status of Ballack and Raul have roused the people of the Ruhr into investing in season-tickets at Leverkusen and at Schalke. But there are sceptics, too.

Gunter Netzer, the ubiquitous columnist and respected former West Germany international, said of Raul: "He has been fine player, is an excellent professional but he needs to show he still has it in him to perform for Schalke. What he achieved in the past no longer counts on the field." Raul had left Real, the club he had represented throughout his professional career because his hold on a first-team place there had loosened so far that he might not even be guaranteed a place on the bench.

The same was true of Van Nistelrooy when he left Real in January. These are not youngsters flocking to Germany because the World Cup alerted them to its thriving system of youth development. They are there because it is well-paid and apparently tolerant of their advancing years. The cynical response, as one German newspaper phrased it, is to wonder if the Bundesliga might be turning into "Dubai De Luxe", a reference to the recent trend of older, medalled footballers from Europe joining clubs in the UAE and Qatar - such as Fabio Cannavaro - towards the ends of their careers.

Like Raul, Ballack is 33 while Van Nistelrooy is 34. The German left England, after helping Chelsea win a third Premier League title, on a free transfer, the London club declining to extend or renew his highly-paid contract. He is under greater scrutiny than anybody. Ballack remains the most recognised face of German football of the new millennium. Around Europe, German tourist board posters use his image to promote the country as a place to holiday under the slogan "Competitive? Yes. And so are our prices" - but he was absent from the World Cup because of his bad luck sustaining an injury on his last Chelsea appearance in the final of the FA Cup at Wembley.

It was a bad tournament to miss. Germany's verve led to some suggestions that the national XI had been liberated without Ballack in the centre of midfield. Even during the tournament, as a younger side gathered momentum, the question about whether he should reassume the captaincy from Philipp Lahm, who wore the armband in South Africa, began to pose itself. In the month since the tournament finished, Joachim Loew, the national head coach, has been asked whether Ballack would not actually spare him a selection headache if he stepped down from the Germany team. The player insists he intends to be at the European Championships in 2012 with his country and has reacted coldly to Lahm's stated desire to continue as captain.

Ballack was last a Leverkusen player in 2002; the Bundesliga has got younger since then. In the past 10 years clubs have more than doubled the average number of players under 23 in their first teams. The German football association's determined and well-funded efforts to boost youth football are partially responsible and they are entitled to pat themselves on the back for the way the World Cup squad showed the benefits of that.

Nor is the Bundesliga a destination only of veterans from elsewhere in Europe. Younger talents are also choosing to join ambitious German clubs rather than play in, say Italy, England or Spain. Simon Kjaer, the Danish centre-half is one such player. He left Serie A's Palermo, where he made a strong impression, and joined not a Serie A giant or a Premier League club but Wolfsburg, the 2009 Bundesliga champions. Bayern's Muller, meanwhile, responded to winning the award for the Best Young Player at the World Cup and the inquiries that followed from abroad by saying he believed Munich to be the finest place for him, right until the end of his playing days.

The same instincts were not shared by Mesut Ozil, Sami Khedira and Jerome Boateng formerly of Werder Bremen, VfB Stuttgart and Hamburg. This trio of young internationals, so conspicuous in the refreshing, multi-cultural image of German football presented to World Cup audiences, have all left the Bundesliga during the summer to join bigger spending clubs elsewhere, with Ozil last Tuesday joining Khedira at Real. Boateng has moved to big-spending Manchester City in England.

All of which contributes to a feeling that Bayern are best equipped to retain their league title, their challengers having to deal with significant turnovers of staff. Bremen look weakened by the sale of Ozil, so often the springboard for their enterprising play; Stuttgart, champions in 2007, will miss Khedira in midfield. Leverkusen, doughty pacesetters for much of last season, may have Ballack but can no longer count on Toni Kroos, who has returned from his year there to his owners Bayern. Schalke will need Raul to compensate the departure of Kevin Kuranyi, their leading goalscorer in 2009/10 and hope that Christoph Metzelder, the tall defender who has returned to his native league from a very low-key spell at Real, can give them the defensive authority formerly provided by the departed Marcelo Bordon.

Bayern happily look to build on the gains made under Louis van Gaal, their head coach, and the yields of having provided so many footballers who shone in South Africa: the Dutch pair Robben and Mark van Bommel, the Germans Lahm, Schweinsteiger and Muller. Van Gaal would have no doubt been pleased for them in July. But he will be miffed if any show long-term symptoms of exhaustion. [e-mail]