| 28.09.2009 |
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| Schalke goalkeeper Manuel Neuer is coming in for a roasting in the German press, held responsible for a “scandal” by both kicker and Bild. What did he do? He led his team to a win, away, against its most hated rival, and dared to enjoy himself afterward. Neuer’s Schalke didn’t exactly brush Dortmund aside in a hard-fought Ruhr derby. The home side had a goal disallowed which, on another day, might have counted - and in truth a draw would have done the balance of play more justice. But the table doesn't have separate columns for pretty, deserved, or half-hearted wins, just the one with a “W” on top, and on Saturday Schalke added another there. The 23-year-old keeper himself, however, was probably less concerned with the win’s effect on the table than on getting one over on the fans from the next town over. After the whistle, Neuer headed over to the 27,000-strong south stand, home to the Dortmund ultras, to raise his arms and do a little victory hop. He was told off by a group of Dortmund players, and headed back toward the center circle, where, a few moments later, an indeterminate part of his body made contact with the face of Dortmund’s Kevin Grosskreutz. Now, in the present era of “professionalism” and DFB and UEFA-led campaigns for “respect,” some people see such roughhousing - and such glee in beating one’s rivals - as passé, or even dangerous. Me, I love it. You see, Neuer is one of a dying breed: an actual supporter of the club he plays for. He grew up rooting for Schalke, standing in the fan block and singing the songs about loving Schalke and hating Dortmund. For him, beating Dortmund away is the next best thing to winning a trophy - it’s the highlight of his season. For Neuer it’s about pride, about bragging rights, about crushing you enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentation of their women - just like it is for the fans. And in today's game, that’s jarring. And wonderful. Grosskreutz says Neuer gave him an elbow to the face. Neuer says he “didn’t see any Grosskreutz” and that if anybody threw an elbow at the guy “it must have been some other Manuel Neuer.” TV cameras missed whatever happened, but a fan’s mobile phone camera video posted to the internet appears to show Neuer back into the Dortmund striker and give him a shoulder block, most probably on purpose. Not a nice thing to do, but nothing much to pout about. Grosskreutz might seem like an unusual target for a star like Neuer, being that he’s just a bit player for Dortmund. The 21-year-old entered Saturday’s match, as he often does, with less than half an hour to play and struggled to make an impression. But he is also, just like Neuer, a born-and-raised fan of his club, and ready to play the part. He told the Bild newspaper prior to the season that he “hates Schalke like the plague” and that they were “public enemy number one” to him. So the kid likes his trash talk - good for him. Now he just needs to take his in-game lumps (and post-match intentional bumps) like a grown-up. |
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| 28.09.2009 |
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| After suffering through another Hertha debacle, I spent yesterday at an election party watching the results of the least interesting political campaign in German history come in. The conversation, as it inevitably does when I'm in a room, quickly turned to football. My interlocutor was a fan of both Bayern and the Social Democrats -- and thus a double loser on the weekend. Yet even he admitted that Hamburg's 1-nil victory over Munich was a great game for neutral fans. Indeed, it was a fascinating match. Faced with the choice between Mario Gomez, Miro Klose and (at least theoretically) Luca Toni, Bayern coach Louis van Gaal left them all out of his starting eleven. (Toni played with the amateurs!) Instead van Gaal went for speed with Olic, Mueller, Ribery, Robben and -- surprisingly -- Philipp Lahm in midfield and Breno at the back. It was the sort of daring, innovative, scarcely anticipated strategy for which the Dutchman is famous. The only thing was: It didn't work. The idea was clearly that Bayern would steamroll Hamburg into submission early on, and for the first thirty minutes, they certainly did have Hamburg on their back heels. Hamburg's defenders only just managed to thwart Ribery and Robben, mostly by triple- and quadruple-teaming them. But then Hamburg found Bayern's weak spots, chiefly on the left side, where Jerome Boateng was often able to dribble the length the field, and in the middle, where Bayern's lack of midfield size left them vulnerable to long balls. And making the difference in the end was the guile and skill of former Bayern midfielder Ze Roberto, who set up the lone goal of the match with an absolutely killer pass. In the end, and ironically, it was Bayern's variety of options that was their undoing, whereas Hamburg's strength was the fact that who should play where is pretty obvious. But the outcome could have gone either way -- which is a lot more than you can say for the Merkel-Steinmeier snoozer. |
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| 24.09.2009 |
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| After a relatively uneventful first round, the German Cup finally returned to its usual wacky form on Wednesday with no fewer than five major upsets. Hamburg are hanging their heads in shame after going out to third-division Osnabrueck, Leverkusen failed against second-division Kaiserslautern, and Wolfsburg slipped up in Cologne. The two top teams in the table and last year’s league champs all became history within the space of a couple hours, and if you’d had a decent-sized bet on that constellation of results, you could probably start thinking about early retirement. A bit earlier in the evening Freiburg and Hertha also lost to second-division clubs Augsburg and 1860 Munich respectively. I followed exactly 30 seconds of the action. Waiting in line at a broiled chicken stand, I peeped through the window of a betting shop and saw that Hertha were down 2-nil in the 65th minute. Mindful of the harm Berlin’s last loss did to one of my favourite internal organs (see below), I thought ‘Well that’s it for Coach Favre’ and decided I’d seen enough. It turned out to be a match full of irony. 1860 was Hertha’s main rival when they last fought relegation in 2004 – Berlin stayed up thanks to a narrow draw in a head-to-head duel, in which 1860 missed a late penalty. And as I found out in Thursday’s papers, Munich almost did Hertha another favour, conceding two late goals to send the match in extra time. In the additional 30 minutes, Hertha apparently did everything but put the ball in the net. The man who thwarted them was goalkeeper Gabor Kiraly – the same mad Hungarian who used to mind the posts here in Berlin. 1860 then went on to win the penalty shoot-out. All things considered, not a bad result. Berlin never wins the Cup, and no one expects Hertha players to be able to do something as difficult as put the ball into a 7.3-meter-wide goal, when there’s a little guy who can use his hands standing on the touchline. As an astute fan at offside.com put it, give Hertha five penalty shoot-outs against England and they’d probably lose all five – though the fourth one might be close. So the absence of real regrets that Berlin blew it in this fashion probably saved Favre’s job. Hamburg, Wolfsburg and Leverkusen, though, will be kicking themselves for squandering realistic chances of hoisting the easiest bit of silverware a Bundesliga club can win. |
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| 21.09.2009 |
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| As threatened, here's a blow-by-blow account of my visit to the Olympic Stadium on Sunday to watch Hertha Berlin against Freiburg. The city of Berlin has both an above-ground and underground subway system, but the former is currently out of commission because it's operated by Germany's national rail company and Hertha's main sponsor, the Deutsche Bahn. It's seems that some penny-pinching folks at the Bahn thought they could save money by not checking the brakes. So my partner-in-crime Kaspar and I had no choice to go subterranean. Kaspar, who's in the sixth grade, is very knowledgeable young football fan, and what could be better than to spend a beautiful late summer day watching the beautiful game with someone not yet jaded by the ups-and-downs of the German capital club? As it turned out the weather was a bit too beautiful, and the game could hardly have been uglier. The match kicked off with the home fans booing luckless striker Artur Wichniarek and coach Lucien Favre, and Hertha conceded a goal within five minutes after their interior defense did a disappearing act. Three more goals were to follow, all for Freiburg, and all set up by horrible lapses at the back for Hertha. It wasn't that Freiburg were any good. Hertha were simply dreadful. It was the worst defensive performance I've seen since Turbine Potsdam lost last season's women's cup final 7-nil. I write "seen," although much of the time I was peering against a glaring sun that was pleasant on the skin but full of unpleasant consequences to come. Now, for the record, I'd like to say that I only had two beers at the match and wasn't even feeling that queasy about the debacle, as Kaspar and I crammed ourselves into the over-crowded subway car for the hour's journey. But halfway through, I noticed that something was seriously wrong. Beads of sweat began dripping off my forehead and everything started to spin. I just made it out of the train and to garbage can on a station platform before becoming violently ill. I used to think violently ill was a metaphor. I know better now. With a bit of luck and forbearance from my young friend, we made it home in the end, and I'll spare you the rest of the gory details of my night. I think it was a case of sun stroke. But I'm not entirely sure. I've seen lots of sporting performance that made me want to puke. This Sunday, it's possible I saw one that actually did make me lose my lunch. |
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| 17.09.2009 |
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| It ain't easy going from the Bundesliga to the Champions League. Just ask Hamburg and Stuttgart, both of whom humiliated themselves in recent years after returning to club football's premier competition. So Wolfsburg's Tuesday win over CSKA Moscow was all the more impressive. It was the Wolves' first-ever CL match, and the Russians -- who won the UEFA Cup 2005 -- are no pushovers. Despite Wolfsburg's faltering start in the league, things are looking up. Grafite, who scored all three of the Wolves' goals, showed last year was no fluke, and if Edin Dzeko gets back on track, they could reel off a bunch of wins. Bayern struggled at the start but dispatched of Maccabi Haifa, 3-nil. They'll be cheered by the emergence of Thomas Mueller, a 21-one-year old player who comes from Munich's youth program. That's a refreshing change to Bayern's usual collection of international divas. And Bremen took up where they last off -- not bothering to play defense but scoring enough to compensate. Their 3-2 Europa League win in Portugal was tighter than it should have been, but on the other hand, if it hadn't been, we probably wouldn't have gotten to see Pizarro's game winner -- a marvelous curling shot from just outside the area. On the down side, Stuttgart's home draw against Rangers suggests that they've not gotten over the departure of striker Mario Gomez. It's going to be a fight for them to stay near the top of the league -- and progress out of the CL group stage. Back in the EL, or whatever the acronym is, Vienna gave Hamburg some serious comeuppance. The Northern Germans' defense was a shambles, but assuming that performance was a one-off, and perhaps the result of believing the hype (see my last blog), Hamburg should be able to recover. The side that's really in trouble is, alas, my beloved Hertha. I'm not sure what's worse: losing away to Mainz or only getting a draw at home against a side with the word "pils" in ist name. (The match certainly made me want to drink pils -- and lots of it.) What's more, Berlin have lost goalkeeper Jaroslav Drobny to injury. If there was one player Hertha could not afford to do without, it was the giant Czech. Now, Hertha are probably better off forgetting about Europe and concentrate on not digging themselves an impossible hole in the first half of Bundesliga season. In any case, I'm going to Olympic Stadium on Sunday to check out live how bad things are. I'll report back with the news. |
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| 14.09.2009 |
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| One of the biggest mysteries in football is why some new arrivals to teams need weeks, if not months to settle in, while others hit their stride instantly and make an immediate impact. Luck is probably part of the answer, but only a part of it. And while some of this season's fast starters, Frankfurt and Leverkusen, have been blessed with good fortune, one team looks as though it's already ready to make a title bid. Like most commentators, I was impressed with Hamburg's new signings. And like most, I thought it would take this team a few months to gel. It hasn't. Midfielder Eljero Elia, who I thought would suffer from some nerves in front of goal, has confounded defenses with his pace and dribbling skills. And he's popped in two extraordinary goals in his first five matches. 35-year-old Ze Roberto, whom Bayern Munich deemed past his sell-by date, has also scored a pair and given the Northern German side a winners' swagger. Indeed, the only summer acquisition who's yet to perform is striker Marcus Berg, but I have little doubt, unless he gets hurt, that we'll be hearing from the big Swedish forward too. Bruno Labbadia isn't one of my favorite coaches. In fact, he's one of my least favorite. But I have to tip my hat to him for forming a squad that has already beaten three of last season's top six teams. Perhaps, the secret is that he is new to Hamburg as well. In any case, Hamburg's fans haven't had to wait for the highlights. They're coming right now. And there's another big chance for the team to shine, when Bayern Munich hit town on September 26. Mark that one down in your calendars. Elia versus Arjen Robben is one duel you won't want to miss. |
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| 06.09.2009 |
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| What is it about golden generations in international football that almost always makes them disappoint expectations? Ten years ago, it was Beckham, Owen and Co. leading England to one premature exit after another. And more recently, no sooner Bastian Schweinsteiger and Lukas Podolski were named potential saviors, than Germany began racking up second and third place finishes instead of titles? We shouldn't read too much into the Nationalelf's 2-nil victory over South Africa on Saturday, especially as it was just a friendly. But one thing is clear, Germany's Schweini-Poldi obsession is over, and the squad is probably better off for it. Mesut Oezil probably isn't a familiar name to people who don't follow German football closely, but believe me he's the real deal. He played a key role in his club Werder Bremen's German Cup win last season and the Germany Under-21 team's European Championship triumph this summer. On Saturday, he scored one of Germany's goals and set up the other -- not bad for a 20-year-old. I've seen him live and am impressed. He's not really a classic playmaker, but his pace up both of the flanks is going to cause lots of teams problems at next year's World Cup -- especially as he's become an efficient finisher as well. I'm also getting more and more taken with Mario Gomez. A very slow starter in the national team, Gomez is finally finding the range he displays week in, week out in the Bundesliga. And that means he should supplant Miroslav Klose, who's in a prolonged slump, as Germany's top center forward. Germany are a virtually shoe-in to qualify for South Africa, as are -- coincidentally or not -- England. Could this be a case of two teams emerging from the jinx that seems to accompany the label "golden generation?" |
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