Eintracht Frankfurt 2026/27 season preview: Transfers, pre-season, predicted lineup & predictions

After a rather underwhelming season in which the team finished 8th, Eintracht Frankfurt will be looking to bounce back and focus on running it back with familiar face Adolf “Adi” Hütter, who previously coached the team to as high as 5th in the Bundesliga back in 2021.

With a busy transfer window and pre-season now behind us, t’s time to break down Eintracht Frankfurt and what we can expect to see from the team in the 2026/27 season!

Transfers

The summer window saw a number of Frankfurt’s key players gutted from the squad, but also some exciting players added to fill in those gaps.

Without a doubt the biggest departure was Nathaniel Brown, who joined home state side Bayern München in a blockbuster €50m move following a standout World Cup performance (1 goal and 1 assist in 3 matches, including an impressive 91% passing accuracy rate). Brown, who contributed 4 goals and 4 assists last season for Frankfurt (as well as having the 2nd most amount of minutes played for the team), will absolutely have his presence missed.

Defenders Aurèle Amenda and Rasmus Kristensen also departed for a combined total of €24m to Coventry City in the Premier League and FC Midtjylland in the Danish Super League respectively. Both players contributed more than 3,000 minutes together for the team last season.

French forward Arnaud Kalimuendo returned to Nottingham Forest following his loan expiration at the end of June. The 24-year-old contributed 6 goals and 1 assist in 19 appearances for Frankfurt last season.

To replace these departures, Frankfurt brought in some exciting new additions.

Two new midfielders have joined Frankfurt in the form of Noël Aséko from Bayern München (€12m fee) and Raphael Onyedika from Club Brugge in Belgium (€9m fee).

Aséko impressed greatly with Hannover 96 on loan from Bayern in the 2. Bundesliga last season, adding 3 goals and 6 assists in 32 appearances. The 20-year-old will be a great addition for both Frankfurt’s present and future, and could potentially use this season to showcase his talent on the big stage.

Onyedika also impressed for Club Brugge last season, especially in the Champions League where he recorded 2 goals and 1 assist in 6 games, including a critical goal and assist against Atletico Madrid in the 1st leg of the Play-off stage to make it 3-3.

In the defense, new signing Otávio will plug in the crucial hole left in the centre-back position, while regular starter Nnamdi Collins remains out with back problems. The Brazilian 20-year-old joins from Portuguese outfit CF Estrela Amadora for €1.5m.

Frankfurt also made some signings for the frontline, including Malik Pimpong for €3.5m from FC Midtjylland and Noel Futkeu from Fürth for €1.3m.

18-year-old Pimpong is an extremely exciting prospect for Frankfurt having scored 20 goals for Midtjylland's U19 side last season. It will be interesting to see his impact (likely off the bench) this season.

Although Futkeu was loaned out to Elversberg for the season, he is a name to keep an eye on for the future as the German striker also had an outstanding 25/26 campaign with 19 goals and 5 assists in 34 games in the 2. Bundesliga. It will be exciting to see him gain some Bundesliga experience and potentially give Frankfurt a lethal option up front in the years to come.

Pre-season

Eintracht Frankfurt had a very busy pre-season tour, having played 8 friendly matches and also their first round Pokal match.

Frankfurt began their pre-season not even a week removed from their last Bundesliga match against Stuttgart, running over local rivals and 6th-division side Rot-Weiß Ffm 7-0. The team stumbled in their next match against 4th-division SV Sandhausen 3-3, with a 1 minute double by Knauff in the 78th and 79th minutes not enough to seal the comeback for Frankfurt as they conceded the equalizer just 5 minutes later.

After a 2 month break, Frankfurt returned with a 7-1 demolition of regional rivals FC Gießen from the 5th division, followed by a relatively simple 3-0 victory over Turkish side Trabzonspor.

Returning to Germany, Mannheim posed a solid challenge to Frankfurt, only overcoming the 3. Liga side 1-0 with a 50th minute match winner from Jonathan Burkardt.

The next match came against recently promoted Premier League side Hull City, who Frankfurt comfortably defeated 2-0. Frankfurt’s final game against domestic opposition came against rivals FSV Frankfurt (who play in the 4th-division Regionalliga Südwest), who they also overcame without much adversity 5-1.

If you have been keeping count, that’s 6 wins and 1 draw for Frankfurt so far, an excellent record considering the level of opposition faced. And then came Brentford.

Brentford, who finished 9th in the Premier League last season, should have at least been a relatively close match. Yet Frankfurt, seemingly still on holiday mode, got crushed in an extremely humiliating 7-0 devastation, conceding 4 goals in just 28 minutes in the 2nd half. Just to remind you, that was the same scoreline that Frankfurt had over Rot-Weiß Ffm, who are 5 divisions below Eintracht. Conversely, both Brentford and Frankfurt play in their respective nation’s top divisions, making this a significantly more unexpected and disastrous result.

Frankfurt shook off this early calamity with an 11-0 belting to cup debutants SC St. Tönis 1911/20 in the first round of the Pokal.

The star player of the pre-season was undoubtedly Burkardt, who netted an outstanding 9 goals (including a hattrick against St. Tönis). Apart from the Brentford match, Frankfurt has mostly shown that they are capable of stacking up against both domestic and continental opposition, a promising sign for this upcoming season.

Predicted starting lineup

4-4-2: Kauã - Baum, Koch, Otávio, Kosugi - Doan, Aséko, Larsson, Uzun - Burkardt, Ebnoutalib

Kauã Santos will likely be the man in between the sticks for Frankfurt following target signing Noah Atubolu’s decision to extend his contract with SC Freiburg.

At the back, Frankfurt will be led by Robin Koch with new signing Otávio likely to pair up the veteran defender. To fill in the void left behind by Brown, we will likely see Kosugi start as left-back following an impressive showing against St. Tönis (recording 3 assists). On the right, we can expect to see Elias Baum who also had some solid pre-season performances.

We will of course see Hugo Larsson start in the midfield for Frankfurt as has been the case for the past 3 years. New signing Aséko will likely start alongside Larsson, with Onyedika providing a reliable option to either come off the bench or potentially even start over Aséko in some games. Veteran midfielder Mario Götze could also theoretically start, however in the past season he was more likely to come off the bench and this pattern will likely continue into the new season.

Frankfurt’s attack will likely remain unchanged, with Doan and Uzun on the flanks and Ebnoutalib and Burkardt combining for a dangerous offensive strikeforce up front. It will be exciting to also see Pimpong’s impact off the bench or even as a potential starter having contributed 3 goals in Frankfurt’s pre-season tour. Farès Chaïbi, despite being a consistent starter, might be utilised behind Uzun who has had a breakout career in recent seasons.

It should be noted that Frankfurt are without several starters, notably star players Ansgar Knauff and Nnamdi Collins, whose timelines for return are currently unknown.

Should Frankfurt be able to field their full lineup, we could see Hütter utilise a 3-back formation such as a 3-4-2-1 featuring Burkardt as the lone striker (with Ebnoutalib now off the bench), Chaïbi and Uzun behind him with Doan and Knauff on the flanks. At the moment however, Frankfurt will likely have to field a more defense-oriented formation while Knauff and Collins are sidelined.

Predictions for the upcoming season

Eintracht Frankfurt are arguably the Bundesliga’s - in fact, they could even be Germany's - most unpredictable team.

Since the 2019/20 season, Frankfurt finished in a different position every year, ranging from a remarkable 3rd place finish in 2024/25 to a crushing 11th place finish in 2021/22 (yet somehow still managing to win the Europa League that season!). In fact, since rejoining the Bundesliga 13 years ago, Frankfurt managed to go from finishing 16th in 2015/16 to winning the Pokal just 2 seasons later in 2017/18.

If you were to average Frankfurt’s league finishes since the 2012/13 season, then you should expect them to finish dead-middle (quite literally, as the figure is 8.5). However, there is reason to believe that this team has so much more potential than a mere mid-table finish.

The breakout performance of striker Jonathan Burkardt single-handedly dragged the team to a top-half finish last season - without his crucial goal contributions, Frankfurt would’ve lost 8 points, plummeting them down to 13th. The attacking presence of plays such as Ednoutalib, Doan, Uzun, Chaïbi and Knauff (when he returns) will ensure that Frankfurt have a quality and deep offensive pool to pull from alongside Burkardt.

The one area that Frankfurt desperately needs to focus on if they want to improve their standings is their defense. Last season, Frankfurt conceded 65 goals in 34 games - the last time they conceded 65 goals or more was the 2000/01 season, where Frankfurt were relegated having finished 17th. With key players like Brown and Amenda gone, Hütter will need to ensure his team can hold it together at the back to avoid another mid-table finish, or potentially worse.

With European football out of the picture (ironically, Frankfurt’s Waldstadion will host this season’s Europa League final!), the goal this campaign will undoubtedly be a return to continental contention.

Unfortunately for Frankfurt fans, a spot in next year’s Champions League is pretty much out the question for this team given the immense quality of other Bundesliga teams this season (it should be mentioned that the 3rd place finish two seasons ago was actually highly uncharacteristic for Frankfurt! The last time they finished 3rd or higher in the Bundesliga was all the way back in the 1992/93 season during the days of Anthony Yeboah and Jay-Jay Okocha).

Realistically speaking, Frankfurt will probably be pushing for at best a Europa League spot, with the Conference League a more grounded expectation (meaning a 6th or 7th-place finish depending on how the season goes). But again, with how volatile Frankfurt has been in recent memory, we can only wait and see how high Die Adler (“The Eagles”) will soar in the league this season.