What is it about sports reporting and the urge to call title races so early? It happened again in Germany this season, as VfB Stuttgart were crowned champions at the weekend, two months after the media said they were definitively out of the running.

“Stuttgart drop out of championship race,” was the headline in Kicker — in mid-March! — after Stuttgart lost 1-0 to Schalke 04. But after eight successive victories at the end of the season, Stuttgart were left having the last laugh.

It baffles me why anyone writing about the Bundesliga would want to declare the race over so early — for declaring winners prematurely makes the final stretch seem dull, which it most often isn’t. History has repeatedly shown that races tighten and the leader in February is not necessarily the winner in May.

You’d think they would learn from their mistakes. But I can remember so many past seasons in which clubs like Schalke, Bayer Leverkusen and others were crowned champions a long way before the finish line. Ignominious predictions, all of them.

We’ve seen it happen in Spain this season, too. Months ago Real Madrid were absolutely discarded as title challengers, yet here they are with three matches to go at the top of the table.

Just count the number of times you hear the phrase “title decider” about a much-hyped match when there are still weeks or even months to go before the season’s end. They almost never decide anything.

Erik Kirschbaum is a Reuters correspondent based in Berlin