And for the final ingredient, add an average attendance of more than 30,000 fans per game. This is boosted by huge crowds at former Champions League sides Hertha Berlin and Schalke, though they are 13th and 14th respectively, and more concerned about relegation.

So yes, it’s chaos – but why is it so close?

According to Lovell, a key factor is money – but unlike its English counterpart it is a lack thereof, rather than an imbalanced abundance.

“It’s not distorted like the Championship is with these parachute payments coming down, Premier League clubs being rewarded for failure with these huge lumps of cash,” he says.

“In German football, they do have a better TV deal then they’ve had historically but it is nothing like the Championship. It is quite a struggle to get back immediately to the top flight.

“Look at Hamburg. Former European champions, Kevin Keegan [as a former player], they were the reason I got interested in German football, they were historically one of the biggest clubs in Germany and very proud of their record of never being relegated from the top flight.

“They were termed the dinosaur because they were never going to get relegated but that fate happened and they haven’t been able to get back.”

Robert Stokowy, a former Cologne native who is now part of the FC Cologne Supporters USA group, says this title race is the result of smaller, well-run clubs colliding with monoliths experiencing tougher times.

“There’s pressure from below, and there’s pressure from the first division,” he tells BBC Sport. “Cologne are an elevator team. Last season we just got beaten badly, and if you look at the Bundesliga right now you have such a discrepancy between how much money teams have, and there’s just no way that that is a healthy and interesting competition.

“What we have [in 2.Bundesliga] is a couple more investors, so some of the clubs from the third division get picked up and all of a sudden they get elevated – look at the rise of Heidenheim and Union Berlin.

“I think the second division is the sweet spot because there is some TV revenue, there’s an interesting mix of clubs from the first division who had glory days back then, and you have the ones who come up from the lower leagues.

“It is an example of what you can do if you run your club well.”