| 13.12.2009 |
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| So it’s 7PM, Friday evening, I’m thinking about having a quiet night, getting some sleep before an early-morning sports shift. The phone rings. My mate Magnus. “Do we want to put ourselves through this?” “Of course.” An hour later, I’m in Bar 11, waiting for last-placed Hertha to get hammered by Leverkusen. Only, the funny thing is: we don’t. In fact, we play pretty well, go up early on a nifty goal in the 8th minute. We hold that lead for over an hour. Victory is in sight. Something must be wrong here. This is Hertha, this is 2009. We never win. My mate Lars bets me 5 euros that the misery is finally over. I take the bet. Leverkusen score out of nowhere. Then go ahead in the 90th minute on a ridiculous deflection. Lars pays up. Hertha score a last minute equalizer. So close to a win and yet so far away. The regulars in the bar don’t know whether to be glad, sad, mad or indifferent. I make my way back home through a frigid Berlin winter night, thinking: If this nightmare were a film, what would be on the soundtrack. I came up with the following. Radiohead - Let Down Cheap Trick – Auf Wiedersehen Built to Spill – Things Fall Apart Hüsker Dü – Everything Falls Apart RL Burnside – It’s Bad, You Know Belle and Sebastian – Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying Johnny Cash – Hurt Guided By Voices – Game of Pricks Bob Dylan – Desolation Row Ween – Help Me Scrape the Mucus Off My Brain dEUS – Worst Case Scenario Herman Dune – So Not What I Wanted Elliott Smith – A Distorted Reality is Now a Necessity to be Free Motörhead – Ace of Spades The thematic leitmotif here is pretty obvious, I think, but this list might raise two questions. Springsteen’s “I’m Going Down” isn’t on it because I can’t stand Springsteen. And Ace of Spades is because every soundtrack or mixed tape, in my opinion, should end with Ace of Spades. Plus, if Hertha had Lemmy as a central defender, there’s no way we’d be where we are in know – almost at the halfway point of a season in hell. |
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| 11.12.2009 |
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| If he fails to find another job in soccer, former Germany and Bayern Munich coach Juergen Klinsmann may have to consider alternative employment, perhaps as a motivational speaker. He has made a good case for himself in this arena this week by launching a scathing attack on beleaguered Liverpool boss Rafa Benitez. Klinsi could travel around slagging off the incumbent coaches in club boardrooms all around the world. Chairmen will gather to hear Klinsi tell them what is so obviously beyond their understanding, perhaps after a nice shiatsu massage or an hour's meditation. Klinsi could reveal the many flaws of the coaches and inspire the club's hierarchy to harness their inner power and sack the boss. After a closing session of primal scream therapy, Klinsi will depart knowing that another club has been saved from mediocrity – while dropping his CV and business card at reception when he leaves. Klinsi's motivational skills may be just what Liverpool owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks need to refocus. After spending the last two seasons fighting with each other and with a myriad of international banks in an effort to keep their badly thought-out investment vehicle afloat, Klinsi could help them see the light. Liverpool will never be the cash-cow they hoped it would be with Benitez at the helm. Best thing you can do is send the Spaniard packing. Once Benitez is safely on the Easyjet plane, Klinsi can then inspire Gillett and Hicks to believe in themselves again and trust their judgment. Remember when you thought a certain German coach would be the answer to your problems? Well, he can be again! And no, I'm not talking about Markus Babbel… Just listen to Klinsi's lists of Liverpool's failings; lack of pace, lack of creativity and passing ability, lack of a second world-class striker, no consistency or quality. Don't you just want to sack Benitez too?! How does he do it? The man's a genius. Germany would never have made it to third at the 2006 World Cup without Klinsi's insight and gift of the gab. And Bayern Munich would surely have been lower than third in the Bundesliga when he departed had he not talked to his players in soothing tones about chi and their place in the universe. If Gillett – who is a huge Klinsmann fan already – and Hicks book a few motivational sessions with the great man himself in the next few months, who could rule out that Klinsi's planned return to football after the 2010 World Cup won't be at Anfield? Given Liverpool's current form and position, the Americans would give their right hands for a bunch of Buddhist statues and a third-placed finish. |
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| 07.12.2009 |
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| Ernest Hemingway famously defined courage as grace under pressure, and Markus Babbel's performance in handling his firing as Stuttgart coach on Sunday lived up to that ideal. The scenes outside Stuttgart's stadium this weekend, where a 3000-strong mob of "fans" gathered to berate and threaten players and coaches, were the epitome of loss of perspective. Babbel took responsibility for his team's poor performance and accepted his dismissal. But he also defended his players - and rightly so. I'm all for supporters letting players hear about it when they fail to give their all on the pitch. But that simply isn't the case with Stuttgart. The squad lacks confidence and has gotten some bad breaks. But there hasn't been a lack of effort. Stuttgart fans need to remind themselves that the man who scored their lone goal on Saturday was Serdar Tasci - a 22-year-old who ignored team doctors' recommendations to try and help his club. Doesn't sound like the act of an overpaid, under-performing football mercenary to me. Last month, in the wake of Robert Enke's suicide, the German football world was full of pious moralizing about the need to see players as human beings. The Stuttgart fans who nearly rioted on Saturday, as Babbel also rightly pointed out, seemed to have learned nothing from that. No player - and I say this as a Hertha Berlin fan - deserves to have his life threatened, even in jest, because of what happens on the pitch. So, Stuttgart supporters, take a piece of well-meaning advice: Chill out! Your team is very unlikely to go down, and if they do, you should follow your ex-coach's example and show some grace instead of running amok like drunken louts. |
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| 03.12.2009 |
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| Louis van Gaal doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who takes things too personally. If he was, he may be feeling a little hurt that Bayern Munich striker Luca Toni is so out of love with the gruff Dutchman that he's even prepared to join West Ham United just to get away from him. Imagine how intolerable life must be at the AllianzArena that a World Cup-winning striker, a regular in the Italy squad and former top scorer in the Bundesliga is considering heading to East London and a potential relegation dogfight. When he's not being fined and banished to the stands, Toni must be locked in a tea chest with the words "temporary urinal" stenciled over its solitary breathing hole. Poor Luca, he must be so desperately unhappy. If this is the action the Italian is ready to take to escape Van Gaal, even the hardest heart may turn a little to introspection and ask "what have I done?" This, of course, ignores the fact that Van Gaal is the Antichrist and the evil architect of Toni's discontent. Seeing the lanky Italian board a Germanwings flight to Stansted would be the best Christmas gift the Dutchman could ever ask for. If he even celebrated Christmas…Which he probably doesn't…Given the blackness of his heart. He probably prefers to sit in solitude under his favorite inverted crucifix, happily breaking the legs of newborn kittens. Except he doesn't. Louis van Gaal, despite his shortcomings as a man-manager and coach, is probably a very nice man. Okay, he seems detached and obstinate, but he never does anything really bad. He's just made a decision over one player and is being cast as a pantomime villain in a bid to make his personality and the extremely dull goings-on at Bayern a little bit more interesting. In reality, this whole Toni-Van Gaal saga is one of the biggest examples of "handbags at dawn" the melodramatic world of modern soccer has produced in the last five minutes. Oh hang on…Manchester City's Mark Hughes and Arsene Wenger of Arsenal are fighting over the etiquette surrounding shaking hands. The refusal by Wenger to accept his opposite number's greasy mitt at the end of Arsenal's Carling Cup defeat last night is threatening the future of humanity. Soccer pundits are expecting a cataclysmic polar shift unless Wenger admits that he's a bad loser. Or not. Anyway, who cares? I'm all for a bit of the sideshow entertainment which makes breaks between matches that little bit more enjoyable but surely these fully grown men can find something worthwhile to fight about. "The coach doesn't like me…He won't play me." At least he's not sleeping with your wife, which is what they used to do in the good old days! "The Frenchman didn't shake my hand…He's out of order." Maybe you'd prefer it if he came round and burned down your favorite pub, just like the managers of the past used to do when they lost a match. (They didn't really but I hope you see my point). When was the last time your saw Jose Mourinho slide across the wet turf on his Armani-suited knees, purposefully inciting riots and hatred among the opposing fans? When was the last time you heard reports of Sir Alex Ferguson kicking a soccer boot at someone's head or throwing a tray of tea cups against the wall? All I can say - and I'm as surprised as anyone about this - is thank goodness for Diego Maradona. The players are boring, the football experience is sanitized – all I ask is that the real characters of the game, those crazy bosses who used to lose their minds and their marriages over the love of the game, don't go the same way. Let's have a bit of real danger in the dug-out. |
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| 02.12.2009 |
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| Uli Hoeness' ascension last week to the uppermost regions of Bayerrn Munich executive heaven meant not just, as cliche-happy analysts gleefully pointed out, the end of an era, but a potential devastating loss for German football fans. For decades, the former striker and sausage manufacturer has been the Bundesliga's best ranter and raver. Who can count the times that Hoeness glared into a camera, his face turning scarlet and veins popping out of his neck, to berate officials, players and - above all - journalists. His tirades were the highlight of many a weekend. Who, if anyone, was going to step to fill the enormous gap he was leaving behind? Enter Stuttgart commercial manager Horst Heldt. After watching his team passively concede two goals in the first half of their match against Leverkusen on Sunday, the diminutive ex-midfielder stopped on the touchline to preview the riot act he was about to read his players in the dressing room. "We're stupid and playing crap," Heldt fumed. "We're seventeenth in the table and trying to play back-heel, tip-of-the-toes, one-two-three football. It's an utter catastrophe. What some of the players are putting on display is completely unacceptable. The best thing would be for the coach to substitute out all eleven of them." I've toned down the translation somewhat top avoid offending the Ned Flanders faction, but you get the idea. This was a verbal smackdown in the best Hoeness tradition, on the mark, fun to watch and replete with the physical signs of a man whose head seemed to be in serious danger of exploding and scattering grey matter on the camera lens. Stuttgart came out and played an equally listless second half, eventually losing 4-nil. If they keep up that form, we can expect to enjoy many more Heldt outbursts in the weeks and months to come. |
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