Seven German clubs have represented the Bundesliga in the UEFA Champions League and Europa League this season, and all seven clubs have advanced to the knockout rounds of one game or another.

10. Bruno Labbadia

Entering the 17th round, Stuttgart ranked sixth in the Bundesliga. If they keep their place, this will be their highest mid-season ranking in years, and it will be the second time they have entered the top half of the standings in the past five seasons.

Bruno Labbadia seems to have broken the Stuttgart rotation of coaches from January to December.

Instead of getting good results in the second round, but being fired before the middle of the next game, he has persisted for two full years. And for good reason: his VfB looks much better than their recent memory. The Swabians may perform well in the Bundesliga, but due to the club’s poor performance in the Europa League, Labadia’s ranking is not high.

9. Thorsten Fink

Last year, in his first season coaching Hamburg, Thorsten Fink led the Northern Club on the verge of relegation. This summer, key players such as Paul Guerrero, Mladen Petrik and Ghan Torre left, while Rafael van der Vaart, Artjoms Rudnev, Rene A Dele, Maxi Best, Peter Girasek and Paul Shaner were taken to the Imtech Arena.

Fink overcame the challenge of adapting to a very different team and completely reinvented HSV this season, seeming to eradicate the mediocre culture that has plagued the club in recent years. Hamburg ranks seventh, and after defeating Dortmund and Schalke, as the mid-season rest approaches, they are sure to compete for a place in the Champions League.

8. Huub Stevens

A month ago, Stevens may have been among the top three or four coaches in Germany. As Schalke played five games in all competitions without winning, and only won once in the past 10 games, his stock fell sharply.

However, it is unfair to belittle Stevens for his good deeds. Schalke has adapted well to life without Raul and can still rank second in the Bundesliga. As for the Champions League, winning the group stage before Arsenal cannot be underestimated.

7. Thomas Tuchel

Like Frankfurt and Hannover, Mainz succeeded in a very tight budget. In the past three summer transfer windows, FSV’s transfer income has been positive. However, Thomas Tuchel has created a cohesive and surprisingly strong lineup, with little to do with him.

Mainz may only rank 11th in the Bundesliga standings, but their ranking is unfair to their performance. In fact, they are only two points behind fifth-ranked Schalke, and their goal difference is 6 points higher than sixth-ranked Stuttgart.

Tuchel has always been the glue that integrates a very ordinary Mainz team into an efficient team. His team is very strong, and his tactical mind has turned players like Eugen Poanski and Elkin Soto into very effective role players.

6. Armin Veh

In 2008, Armin Veh reached the top of the world. The coach made Stuttgart an incredible result in the second half of the 2007-08 season, and the Swabian won the Bundesliga title.

In the following months, Veh’s situation changed drastically, and he was fired only six months later. In the next few seasons, he ended up in Wolfsburg and Hamburg to no avail, and finally found a job in the recently relegated Frankfurt.

Somehow, Veh has turned everything around. Frankfurt returned to the Bundesliga in May and performed well in the first half of the season. They ranked fourth with only one game left in the first round. For a team without a real star, this is great, and in Frankfurt, he achieved a record of victory for the first time in his career.

After the winter break, Frankfurt’s state may decline, but for now, it is undeniable that Veh is one of the best coaches in the league.

5. Lucien Favre

Last season was an incredible season for Monchengladbach, as this team has been struggling in the top German league for many years and ended up in fourth place. Lucien Favre is known as a genius, but there is a mountain to climb in 2012-13.

Marco Royce, Dante and Roman Neustad lost more in the summer than most coaches can afford. Although Gladbach successfully signed Luke De Jong, Granit Xaka and Alvaro Dominguez in the summer, the Dutch and Swiss internationals have not adapted so far, proving that some players cannot simply be replace.

Gladbach’s poor performance in the first few weeks of the campaign is to be expected for a team that loses three stars. Since then, they have reversed the situation, ranking eighth and still maintaining an amazing distance from Dortmund, Frankfurt and Schalke. In the Europa League, they won three of the last four games of Group C and eventually advanced to the first round of the knockout round.

4. Mirko Slomka

When Mirko Slomka coached in Hannover in 2010, he inherited a relegation team equipped with a poor quality lineup. Everything he has done since then has been extraordinary: in his first two full seasons, he led the Saxon team to a place in the Europa League. Before him, European football was just a pipe dream.

In the 2012-13 Bundesliga, Hannover slightly lags behind the rhythm set in previous years. However, they won the Europa League Group L title before Levante, Helsingborg and Twente. This is a truly remarkable feat. Since Slomka coached, H96 only spent three summers. 10.25 euros.

Slomka has no lack of interest from other clubs, but last week he promised to renew his contract with Hannover until 2016. H96 couldn’t be better.

3. Sascha Lewandowski (or Sami Hyypia)

Sascha Lewandowski may be the official head coach of Bayer Leverkusen, but this is only because Sami Hyypia does not yet have his coaching license. In fact, the joint trainers have formed a brilliant partnership.

Leverkusen lost several big-name players and introduced many new stars in the summer, which made Lewandowski and Hypia face the arduous task of rebuilding the team. Leverkusen hardly missed a beat and is now the only team competing with league leaders Bayern. Considering that B04 is the only Bundesliga team to beat the Bavarians this season, all this fits well.

Leverkusen is one of the seven teams that qualify for the European Cup group stage. Although they only finished runners-up in the Europa League group stage, it should be noted that they played the penultimate game against Metalis in Kharkov. In the special game, Wexel, who has already qualified, used an experimental team with many young players.

To be fair, Leverkusen has proven his level in the domestic arena, beating Bayern and Schalke.

2. Jupp Heynckes

Bayern’s outstanding performance in the Bundesliga this season should be attributed to Heynckes. With one game left before the winter break, the German record champion is expected to surpass Dortmund’s single-season record of 81 points. And they have been doing all this: So far, Bayern’s goal difference is an astonishing +37. This means that Bayern has won an average of more than two goals per game.

Bayern successfully qualified in the first two rounds of the German Cup and advanced to the top 16 of the UEFA Champions League as the first in the group. Of all the teams in Europe, few can claim to be more effective.

However, although Bayern’s record is simply amazing, but their performance in large competitions still needs to be improved. They only faced Dortmund at the Allianz Arena, and there was no shortage of difficulties in the Champions League home and away games against Valencia. Heynckes has not yet allowed his team to reach the level reached in the second half of last season, so he ranks second on this list.

1. Juergen Klopp

Dortmund has a very slow pace in the Bundesliga and is now basically second in May. The fatigue caused by the crowded schedule and injury of key players has caused losses to the league and DFB-Pokal holders. But even so, Jurgen Klopp is still the best coach in Germany.

The criterion for measuring the true quality of a coach is not whether his team can win a game against a weaker team, but how he motivates his team in a high-stakes game and defeats the opponent tactically.

In the Bundesliga, Klopp’s Dortmund was found tied with Bayern in the game 11 days ago. What motivated the Dortmund coach to take the lead before the game was how he transformed his team from a group of naive young players who had failed in the international arena for two years to the most impressive team in the UEFA Champions League group stage.

Many people say that Mourinho is the best coach in the world, but Klopp defeated Real Madrid in both tactics and motivation. Considering that he lost a key player of Kagawa Shinji in the summer and his bench is very limited, Klopp is indeed a phenomenon.