James Horncastle

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On Saturday, thousands of people gathered in front of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. The plan wasn’t to storm it, as had been the wisdom of one such crowd during the Revolution in 1917, but instead to begin a march to the Petrovsky Stadium in anticipation of Zenit being crowned 2012 Russian champions.

Standing at the front, a leading ultra raised a megaphone to his mouth and started the chanting, the fist pumping, jumping and saluting. Huge blue and white flags were unfurled and flares lit leaving a trail of orange and green-ish smoke in their wake.

As the noisy and jubilant fans made their way to the ground, it was possible to see a billboard erected by the club earlier in the season. Above the slogan: “Our city, one team,” it showed a pair of authoritative figures, each bald, wearing a scarf and thick winter jackets. On the left was Tsar Peter the Great. On the right was Zenit coach Luciano Spalletti. Within this St. Petersburg-specific context, there could be no bigger compliment.

The high regard in which Spalletti is held only grew as the day wore on. When the supporters did eventually take their seats at the Petrovsky, cause for celebration wasn’t lacking.
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Noisy. Raucous. De Kuip was in song again. The chant: “Super Guidetti, you make us happy, please score for Feyenoord” grew in volume as one fan after another lent their voices to it during the Rotterdam derby against bottom club Excelsior on Saturday.

As usual, it hadn’t taken long for their call to be answered. A well-worked corner teed up a shot, which he drove into a crowded penalty area. Once deflected, it changed direction and caught goalkeeper Jordy van Deelen completely flat-footed.

It was quite literally a gift of a goal. John Guidetti had found the net for the 20th time this season on the eve of his 20th birthday. “Maybe that’s a bit of a sign,” he smirked.

So too are the petitions launched by Feyenood fans to get Guidetti to stay beyond the existing terms of his loan from Manchester City. It’s not hard to see why he is so popular.
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Klaas-Jan Huntelaar made it home a little quicker than usual last Thursday night. His commute from Gelsenkirchen to Angerlo across Germany’s border with the Netherlands usually takes him about an hour. But this time when the Schalke striker stepped out of his car and looked at his watch, he realized he’d done it in closer to 45 minutes.

Huntelaar hadn’t intentionally floored it down the autobahn. He isn’t a speed freak jumping red lights as his old Ajax teammate Zlatan Ibrahimovic revealed himself to be in his biography. Huntelaar by contrast once drove a VW camper van to training at De Toekomst, a reminder of his childhood camping holidays with his family near Bitburg when he’d eat steak frites and maybe share a beer with his dad if he were lucky.

A leisurely ride along the scenic route seems to be more his kind of thing, not the fast and the furious. Yet on this occasion, Huntelaar was frustrated and, as he admitted in an interview with Bild, he didn’t calm down until he saw his kids. His mind had been on the road but it was elsewhere too. The events of a few hours earlier kept replaying in his head.
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Shinji Kagawa dashed over to the dugout, high-fived his coach Jürgen Klopp and a couple of teammates before searching out Felipe Santana in particular. It was their special day after all.

Before Saturday’s game against Werder Bremen, the Borussia Dortmund players had gathered around the pair and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ in the dressing room. After eight minutes, Kagawa had opened the scoring. It was the icing on the cake and he wanted to blow the candles out with Santana.

“I got myself a present today,” he said. “It’s his birthday as well and I’m happy that I was able to dedicate my goal to him.”

The afternoon had started on a somber note. A minute’s silence was held in memory of ‘Timo’ Konietzka, who died in Switzerland last week. He had been suffering from cancer and, according to a death notice he had published in the newspaper Blick, took his own life with the help of the Swiss assisted suicide group Exit.

“Konietzka, forever a German champion,” read a banner in the stands. A prolific striker for Dortmund in the late `50s and early `60s, he is most remembered, quite coincidentally, for finding the net against Werder on August 24, 1963. It was an historic goal because it was also the first to ever be scored in the newly formed Bundesliga.
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Jupp Heynckes shuffled in his seat. He shrugged and sighed, looked away then turned back to his interlocutors, fingering his chin for a moment before pulling his hand away in an instinctive gesture of baffled resignation. It doesn’t take much for the 66-year-old coach of Bayern Munich to look flustered, with his reddish complexion and windswept grey hair. But now he looked particularly uncomfortable.

Heynckes was trying to explain Saturday’s 2-0 capitulation to Bayer Leverkusen. He sought to give a reason why his team had once again relinquished the initiative following an “outstanding” first half when Bayern had created chance after glorious chance only to fail to win a game they really should have won.

Unable to find one, he pleaded mea culpa. “The criticism is valid also for myself [not just for the players],” Heynckes said. “I am the person responsible for the whole thing. Whoever coaches Bayern has to deal with such situations. I must remain calm and confident in myself. I think I have the necessary experience.”
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King Otto clearly likes what he sees in training with Hertha

There are miracle-makers and then there is ‘Rehhacles’. The dictionary definition of ‘Rehhacles’ should be: a coach with the powers of a divine hero from Greek mythology who works wonders, thereby producing the kind of ‘Did that really happen?’ moments that make football so compelling. Hertha Berlin clearly believe in ‘Rehhacles’. They need to.

A dozen matches without a win has left the club reaching out for whatever it can to pull itself to safety. But as Hertha kept slipping closer and closer to the drop all they could do was pray for ‘Rehhacles’. On Monday, their call was answered.

Still, it was to widespread surprise that Hertha announced the appointment of Otto Rehhagel. Away from the Bundesliga for 12 years, the return of King Otto left many aghast. Few thought they’d ever see his royal highness on one of the country’s benches again.
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Flashback to transfer deadline day, August 2011. Milan have already said that, for them, the window is “closed, in fact it’s very closed.” But Adriano Galliani can’t help himself. Like a punter at the races, he fancies another flutter, backing a horse everyone else thought was a donkey. The odds are long, but as with Tipperary Tim, Gregalach, Caughoo, Foinavon and Mon Mome, all of whom were 100-1 winners at the Grand National, his outside bet comes home. “It was a stroke of luck,” Galliani smiled.

A colpo alla Nocerino has now entered the rich vocabulary of Italian football. It refers to the player involved that fateful day when Galliani had a gamble on Antonio Nocerino. “I understand what it means,” the midfielder shrugged. “Someone who costs little.” He has proven a bargain, perhaps the best signing of the season in Serie A matched only by the deal Lazio did for Miroslav Klose.

Nocerino was bought from Palermo for £880,000 with barely a few minutes to spare before the market shut last summer. He had been training under the Sicilian sun contemplating the season ahead when a member of the club’s staff came over to relay the news. Mathieu Flamini’s cruciate ligament injury a day earlier had prompted Milan to find a player to cover for him during the five months that he’d be out. Yet the move for Nocerino was still a surprise, and, judging by the adverse reaction of the fans, not a pleasant one at that. He was ridiculed. The general consensus about Nocerino at Milan was that he was beneath them.
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