Many fans will be interested in how the top of the table shapes up next season, with Leverkusen looking to retain their title and fight of a bruised Bayern team, however, today Bundesliga.com is looking at the league's new boys and the promoted players you should look out for...

Oladapo Afolayan

Oladapo Afolayan has had an interesting journey to the Bundesliga, which involved a brief spell playing for Loughborough University. Having played in the Chelsea academy as a youngster, Afolayan’s bright start to his football journey was put on hold when his family moved to Canada. Having returned to England, the young talent enrolled in a civil engineering degree at Loughborough and joined the first team there, which played in England’s ninth tier at the time. 

From there, Afolayan joined Solihull Moors in the English fifth tier before being signed for West Ham United’s U21 side, all in the space of two years. Since joining St. Pauli in Bundesliga 2 in January of last year, Afolayan has scored 13 times, with nine of those coming in the league as St. Pauli secured promotion to the Bundesliga for the first time since the 2010-11 season.

So far, he has managed to clear every footballing hurdle that has come his way and it will certainly be interesting how he adapts to the Bundesliga having never played in a first division before.

Jackson Irvine

St. Pauli’s Australian captain has made a big impression at the club since joining in the summer of 2021, and not just because of his impressive outfits off the pitch. Irvine’s career saw him start out at Frankston Pines, an Australian football club founded by local Scottish Australians not far from Melbourne. Having impressed there, Irvine continued his association with Scottish football by swapping Northern Victoria for Celtic’s youth teams, before going on to spend the following six years in Scotland then moving across the border to England. 

After winning the Bundesliga 2 title last year, captain Irvine will be looking forward to his first time in the Bundesliga - Stuart Franklin

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After another brief spell in Scotland with Hibernian, Irvine eventually joined St. Pauli in the summer of 2021 and has since gone on to score 15 goals and provide 15 assists from midfield, becoming an integral part of the club’s promotion campaign. 

At 31-years-old, Irvine is a mature player playing some of the best football of his career so far and he will be relishing the chance to prove himself in the Bundesliga.

Fiete Arp

Fiete Arp is no stranger to the Bundesliga having made 18 appearances in the league for Hamburg in the 2017-18 season. However, Arp’s last game in the German top flight came against Hoffenheim toward the end of that same season.

Having impressed in Hamburg’s youth teams with his goalscoring ability, Arp eventually caught the eye of Bayern, whom he joined in 2019 having made 35 appearances for Hamburg’s first team across Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2. However, his time at Bayern didn't go according to plan and he failed to make a Bundesliga appearance for the side in his three years in Bavaria, before joining Holstein Kiel in 2022 having previously played for the club on loan.

Fiete Arp will feel he has a point to prove as he returns to the Bundesliga - Oliver Hardt

Since joining Kiel, Arp has scored eight Bundesliga 2 goals with five of those coming in his 17 appearances last season. Despite his contribution to last season’s promotion campaign, Arp may still have wondered what could have been if it weren’t for a tendon injury that saw him miss the second half of a season in which he registered a goal involvement every 109 minutes, up until his injury in December. 

With that now behind him, Arp will look to continue where he left off last season and prove that he belongs back in the Bundesliga.

Steven Skrzybski 

Another key figure in Holstein Kiel’s promotion winning squad was Steven Skrzybski, whose 10 goals made him the club’s top scorer and a big factor behind them joining the Bundesliga for the first time in the club’s history.

Kiel fans will be hoping Skrzybski maintains his fine form in front of goal next season - Oliver Hardt

After spending 11 years in the youth teams of Union Berlin and making 136 Bundesliga 2 appearances for the capital club, Skrzybski joined Schalke in 2018 where he made 25 Bundesliga appearances across two years in Gelsenkirchen, before joining Fortuna Düsseldorf where he spent the 2019-21 season on loan. 

Following the end of his loan in Düsseldorf, Skrzybski joined Kiel where he has gone on to make 88 appearances and score 29 goals. With a knack for scoring goals from midfield and a return to the Bundesliga on the horizon, Skrzybski will certainly be one to watch next season.

Lewis Holtby

Having made for a name for himself in the Bundesliga with Bochum and Mainz as an energetic midfielder, Holtby then made the move to UEFA Champions League regulars Schalke in 2010, going on to make three appearances for Germany under Joachim Löw in the process. At Schalke, Holtby made 55 appearances over two years before leaving for the Premier League and Tottenham Hotspur.

After a year at Spurs, Holtby joined London rivals Fulham on loan, before returning to the Bundesliga with Hamburg at the end of that spell. He then went on to make over 100 Bundesliga appearances for the club before they were relegated at the end of the 2017-18 season. Since then, Holtby has not appeared in the Bundesliga, having spells at Blackburn, Alemannia Aachen and now Kiel since departing Hamburg.

Lewis Holtby will be delighted to be back in the Bundesliga next season - Oliver Hardt

At the age of 33 and with 200 Bundesliga appearances already under his belt, Holtby will be feeling a sense of the familiar at being back in the league as opposed to the possible nerves of some of his teammates. Now at the tail end of his career, the veteran has a different role within the team and the challenge of leading this Kiel team by example in the Bundesliga is a challenge that will surely bring the best out of him.