St Pauli – Wolfsburg

The rivals will exchange goals in a battle for survival in the Bundesliga.

An intriguing situation has developed in the Bundesliga relegation battle ahead of the final matchday of the season. As expected, the competition between St. Pauli and Wolfsburg to avoid direct relegation stretched to the last round of the championship. However, experts did not at all expect that Heidenheim would wedge into this fight, a side that had spent almost the entire season at the bottom of the table and showed only weak signs of life on the pitch. Heidenheim's surge in the last rounds has created, ahead of Saturday's matches, a situation in which Wolfsburg, Heidenheim and St. Pauli each have 26 points. These three clubs will determine among themselves which two are directly relegated to the 2. Bundesliga and the only one who will get a chance to preserve their place in the elite division through the playoff matches. Wolfsburg has a negative goal difference of -26, and the other two have conceded 29 more goals than they have scored. In other words, if Wolfsburg wins in Hamburg, Heidenheim is unlikely to overtake them. To do that, the latter would need to beat Mainz and score three more goals in Mainz's net than Wolfsburg scores against St. Pauli. But will the Hamburg team agree to be a mere statistic in the final round, even if its form is worse than the others? Bookmakers have priced the visitors as favorites for the upcoming match, offering odds of 2.31 on their victory. St. Pauli has fallen to the bottom of the table not only because of the crafty rivals in the survival race. The Hamburg club has not won a single Bundesliga match in the spring of 2026, limiting itself to three points. In other words, St. Pauli over the last 2.5 months across nine rounds have dropped 24 of 27 possible points. That said, Alexander Blessin's side have, over this period, without the slightest doubt lost only to Bayern Munich. Wolfsburg, after a change of coach, also stuttered for quite some time. However, since mid-April, Dieter Hecking has managed to get the team playing again, and they have lost only in one of the last four rounds. In the first half of the season Wolfsburg beat St. Pauli 2-1. Given the critical importance of the upcoming match for both opponents, it is also worth betting here on both teams to score.