Archive for the ‘Bundesliga’ Category

By Jason Davis

One day into this trial/loan with Nuremburg, LA Galaxy and aspiring US international Omar Gonzalez tore an ACL and will now miss the next 6 to 9 months. Disaster. Heartbreak. Catastrophe. Is it exactly the type of unfortunate event that demands (re)action?

Naturally, Gonzalez’s injury has touched off a debate about the wisdom of winter loans and training stints for MLS players. The immediate and knee-jerk reaction is to suggest that MLS should end them now, lest another young star be lost for most of a season due to a something that happened on another team’s watch. The risk is too high, it does the MLS clubs no good to have their investments putting their health on the line, and players – whether they realize it or not – do need some down time in the off-season to allow their bodies and minds to recuperate.

The competing interests in play make the issue difficult to untangle. MLS clubs, in most cases, should want to protect their players. LA now faces a season without the 2011 Defender of the Year. If, as has been reported by people who know things, Gonzalez’s time at FCN was meant as a prerequisite to a summer sale, LA out both a player and money. Omar in Germany looks like a terrible idea in retrospect.
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Every year I have the same conversation with the missus:

“Should we get an Advent calendar?”

“Chocolate or religious?”

“Both. Shepherd molds hold a lot of chocolate.”

“Okay, but it’s already December 16th.”

“We can melt Dec. 1st to 16th into a chocolate fondue.”

“You can do that.”

And then we go looking for a calendar and find they’re impossible to find. Never in my wildest imagination did I a) think the Internet would solve this annual problem and b) do it in the form of a Thomas Mueller-themed calendar (cheers to James Tyler for the link). The Bayern Munich midfielder I’m proud to say made my list of the top thirty players in the world.

Each window brings a new surprise. Mueller holding a signed shirt, Mueller signing his shoes, Mueller holding a life-size cut out of…Mueller. Whilst none of it is Christmas theme and doesn’t taste nearly as good as that chalky, dropped-on-the-factory-floor chocolate that ends stuffed in those tiny plastic coffins, it does allow you to open windows and receive a mild surprise. Bonus if you speak German.

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We tend to overlook the goalkeeping position in football, or at least pay less attention to it than we should. For me, a good goalkeeper can be worth 10 points in the standings over the course of the season, and we’re seeing that happen in La Liga today.

I use the present tense because, as I write this, I’m watching what is truly a strange, albeit exhilarating, match between Sevilla and Real Madrid. Cristiano Ronaldo has just struck an absolute golazo from 25 yards to give the guests a 3-0 lead with halftime fast approaching, but to be honest I have no idea how the scoreline came to be what it is.

Sevilla have not been poor. As a matter of fact they’ve launched 11 attempts at the Madrid goal, and they might well have equalised just two minutes after Ronaldo’s early opener had Iker Casillas not dived across the goalmouth to make a heroic save on Manu del Moral, who had a gaping net in which to tuck the ball.

It was one of the finest saves your likely to see, and if ever there was a better one it came five minutes later when Piotr Trochowski’s low, hard shot to the far corner was turned wide of goal by the Madrid ‘keeper’s fingertips. What made the stop especially impressive was the fact that Casillas, even before he lunged to his right, had to pick out the ball from the maze of legs in front of him. Sevilla should really have been 2-1 up after 17 minutes, and that they weren’t was totally down to the Spain captain.

It’s almost halftime, and no doubt Sevilla are scratching their heads: “How are we 3-0 down?” But that’s the thing about a world class goalkeeper. While the game could well have been beyond Madrid’s reach before the half-hour mark, Casillas did what he needed to do to give his attacking teammates a chance to turn the tide. They did, and they’ll surely claim the three points as a result.

But we’ll get back to Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan in a moment. There are a number of other things on my mind I’d like to share.

The Do-or-Die Derby. Blackburn Rovers-Bolton Wanderers isn’t exactly a glamour match, and there seems even less reason to watch it given that the two Lancashire clubs are currently propping up the Premier League. Their combined 19 points from 16 matches is exactly half of Manchester City’s total, and the league leaders have played a game fewer. That said, there’s a fascinating subtext to the match, and it has everything to do with the under-fire managers involved in it. Owen Coyle’s Bolton have already lost 13 matches this season, including the last five in a row, and have managed to concede one goal or less on only four occasions. Steve Kean’s Blackburn have only been slightly less incompetent. They’ve won just one of their last 10 matches (against promoted Swansea) with a side that, on paper, should be comfortably mid-table. One of these managers will probably lose their job on Wednesday morning, but the truth is both should get the sack before the match even happens.

Sevilla-Madrid update: It’s halftime, and Real Madrid will play the second 45 minutes with 10 men after Pepe was shown a second yellow card for a brainless slap to the face of Alvaro Negredo.

I think one of the crucial differences between Madrid and Barcelona is in defense. Where Barcelona have the type of defenders who can maintain a high line comfortably, making it seem like they often have an extra man in midfield, Madrid have no such luxury. Pepe is so undisciplined, nevermind a very, very overrated defender, that he’d constantly get caught out of position, causing him to take even more fouls than he already does. And while I like Sergio Ramos as a right-back, I really don’t rate him as a central defender.

Dortmund rediscover their form. An early Champions League exit came as a major disappointment to Borussia Dortmund, who all of last season were lauded for their fluid, free-scoring football and must have entered Europe’s premiere club competition expecting to put on a show on the grandest stage. They didn’t, and they played to a disappointing 1-1 draw at Kaiserslautern a few days after their elimination. Against Freiburg on Saturday, however, they looked every bit their old selves. Shinji Kagawa earned assists on a pair of Robert Lewandowski tallies, and Kevin Grosskreutz scored an absolute cracker just shy of the hour-mark after Lewandowski set him up from 20 yards. Dortmund won the match 4-1 and enter the winter break just three points back of Bayern Munich atop the Bundesliga standings.

Sevilla-Madrid update: Angel di Maria, who has put in a man-of-the-match performance, has just made it 4-0 Madrid, firing a shot with the outside of his right foot that, according to match commentator Ray Hudson, had more curve to it than Jessica Rabbit.

Wolves 1-2 Stoke. A Peter Crouch header in the 70^th minute—from a Matthew Etherington cross—proved the match winner at Molineux, Saturday, and took Stoke to within three points of fifth-place Arsenal. At the start of the season I said I saw Stoke performing well and consistent enough to earn a fifth or sixth-place finish, and with four wins on the bounce heading into a congested Christmas schedule my prediction is looking like a good one (certainly better than it looked two months ago). A lot of my belief in the Potters stems from the chairman-manager relationship of Peter Coates-Tony Pulis. Each season since 2007-08—Stoke’s last in the Championship—Coates has made a reasonable amount of money available to Pulis, who has in turn invested that money in acquisitions appropriate to the club’s reality. In 2009 he signed Etherington to help consolidate the club as a Premier League outfit; a year later he added Kenwyne Jones and Marc Wilson. This past summer Pulis signed Jonathan Woodgate and Peter Crouch, among others, and he’ll surely go back into the transfer market seven months from now. The point is, Stoke’s consistent, intentional spending has allowed the club to progress from level to level, and consistent European qualification is what awaits them going forward. They’re a superbly-run club.

Sevilla-Madrid update: The final whistle has blown on a 6-2 win for Real Madrid. Negredo’s goal in the 92^nd minute came as little consolation to the hosts, who finally found the back of the net in the 69^th minute through Jesus Navas. Ronaldo put the finishing touches on his hat-trick with a successful penalty in the 85^th, and Hamit Altintop completed the scoring for the guests four minutes later.

Those Iker Casillas saves seem so long ago—two acts of absolute brilliance that will now be overshadowed by an impressive result. The thing is, Madrid would likely have never gone on to win had their ‘keeper not bailed them out in the first half. That story isn’t told in the scoreline. Football is funny that way.

Follow Jerrad Peters on Twitter @peterssoccer

Now there’s something you don’t see everyday. How many times did we wish the Jabulani would just explode at last summer’s World Cup? Problem was, they would’ve just replaced it with another crap ball. But on Friday in Bayern Munich’s 3-0 win over Cologne, Daniel van Buyten’s sheer power, and the obstacle of a deflection, was enough to force the insides of a Torfabrik II ball to explode. Arjen Robben seemed extremely inconvenienced at the delay.

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This afternoon, Manchester City hosts Bayern Munich in their final Group A match. Bayern have already won the group and have qualified for the round of 16. Manchester City meanwhile need to beat them (and for Villarreal to draw or defeat a rampant Napoli) in order to progress.

Not that a single games are the most reliable indicator of broad trends within the European game, but Manchester City and Bayern offer up an interesting contrast. The success of Louis van Gaal’s managerial replacement in Jupp Heynckes tells part of the story of Bayern’s impressive 2011-12 season, but within that team is a bedrock of core German talent: Philip Lahm, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Thomas Müller. All of them played for the Bayern Munich academy side, and all live within 70 KM of the Munich area, and all are full German internationals.

While the Bayern academy team has led the way in producing the current crop of German football prodigies (including Mats Hummels), they are not alone in the Bundesliga. Mario Gotze spent eight years with the Borussia Dortmund academy side, three of them alongside Gladbach’s breakout star Marco Reus. The Bender brothers Lars and Sven both got their start in the 1860 Munich’s academy team. The average age of Germany’s national team at the World Cup in 2010 was 25.
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Things are a lot tighter atop the Bundesliga heading into Sunday’s matches than they were coming into the weekend. Bayern Munich’s third defeat of the season has a lot do with that, especially since it came against second-place Borussia Dortmund, but third-place Borussia Monchengladbach—who are an early feel-good story—and fourth-place Schalke recorded decisive wins as well, and even Wolfsburg got in on the action with a 4-1 triumph against Hannover that ended a three-match unbeaten run.

Mario Gotze notched the only tally as Borussia Dortmund won their third straight match against Bayern Munich—a 1-0 decision at Allianz Arena where both sides traded quality chances before and after the 65^th-minute goal. And what a goal. With Robert Lewandowski breaking fast down the left, Gotze and Shinji Kagawa dashed into the goalmouth where the Poland forward found them with a pinpoint pass. Gotze accepted it, and after a quick exchange with Kagawa smashed it past goalkeeper Manuel Neuer as two Bayern defenders closed in. It was a typical Dortmund goal, and a goal that was always be going to be scored at least once in this match.

That Bayern didn’t find the net at all is mystifying. This, after all, is a side that before Saturday had been obliterating everything in its path. A trip-up in Hannover on October 23 was followed with four wins in which they outscored their opponents a combined 15-3 and preceded by a 13-match unbeaten streak going back to August. But the loss of midfield engine Bastian Schweinsteiger to a broken collarbone cannot be overstated, and Bayern manager Jupp Heynckes’ decision to tinker with his line-up rather than insert the closest thing to a like-for-like replacement into the team against Dortmund will no doubt be one he regrets.

Instead of deploying two of David Alaba, Anatoliy Tymoschuk and Luis Gustavo in the centre of his midfield, Heynckes opted to pull Toni Kroos into a deeper playmaking role alongside Luis Gustavo while Thomas Muller moved to Kroos’ usual position between the left-sided attacker (Franck Ribery) and the right-winger (Arjen Robben).

The change provided Dortmund midfielders Sebastian Kehl and Sven Bender with a battle they could win, and Bender, in particular, imposed himself in the centre of the park. Marcel Schmelzer deserves mention as well. The Dortmund left-back completely neutralized Robben over the 90 minutes, although the Dutchman was obviously lacking match-fitness after a three-month spell on the sidelines with a nagging groin injury.

The three points take Dortmund to 26 from 13 matches and extends their unbeaten run to seven games. Bayern remain in first place with 28 points, although the comfort level they so recently enjoyed has vanished as, aside from Dortmund, Borussia Monchengladbach, Schalke and Werder Bremen are breathing down their necks.

The second of the day’s two top-five encounters was played in Monchengladbach—a mid-sized city near the Dutch border—where hosts Borussia hammered fellow title contenders Werder Bremen 5-0 at Borussia-Park.

Marco Reus scored a hat-trick in the rout, bringing his haul so far this campaign to 10—just one shy of his total from all of last season—and putting him on track to continue a five year streak of increased output. He scored eight goals in his first season at Monchengladbach in 2009-10, four in 2008-09 and one in 2007-08 as a 17-year old at Rot Weiss Ahlen. Now, at 22, he is a full German international and one of the many midfield-forward hybrid players being produced in that country at the moment. At ‘Gladbach he plays up top with Mike Hanke—a towering forward who can knock the ball down and hold it up nicely for his talented, goal-hungry teammate.

Juan Arango has also been a big part of Borussia Monchengladbach’s success this season, and scored the fifth goal against Bremen on Saturday. The 31-year-old—who had an impressive Copa America last July with semifinalists Venezuela—is enjoying his best season in Germany since moving from La Liga side Mallorca in 2009 and is among the Bundesliga’s assist leaders. He had two helpers against Bremen, including an exquisite cross to Patrick Herrmann in the 16^th minute for the opener and eventual match-winner.

‘Gladbach, who haven’t won the title since completing a three-peat in 1977 (they won five titles in the ‘70s with a team that included the likes of Berti Vogts and current Bayern Munich manager Jupp Heynckes), are currently level with Dortmund on 26 points but trail in the goal-differential category. Bremen, who had been on a three-match unbeaten run before Saturday, are fifth in the standings with 23 points.

Saturday’s three other Bundesliga matches produced a trio of two-goal scorers, as Schalke’s Klaas-Jan Huntelaar scored twice in a 4-0 trouncing of Nurnberg, Hasan Salihamidzic recorded a brace in the first half of a 4-1 win over Hannover and Stefan Reisinger bulged the net in the 61^st and 95^th minutes of Freiburg’s come-from-behind 2-2 draw at Hertha Berlin.

There would have been a sixth contest on this day, but Cologne’s match at home to Mainz was called off after it was learned that the referee who was supposed to oversee the game—Babak Rafati—had attempted suicide in his hotel room.

When Rafati, a 41-year-old banker, failed to arrive as scheduled at RheinEnergieStadion for the 3:30pm kickoff, his assistants called the hotel where they all were staying and, getting no answer, went back to check on him. They got into his room with the help of hotel staff and found him lying in the bathtub, veins opened and barely alive. He was immediately rushed to hospital where his critical condition was later downgraded to stable.

In a press conference shortly after the match cancelation, German Football Association president Theo Zwanziger praised the referee’s assistants for taking the quick, necessary steps to save Rafati’s life. When asked about the circumstances that led to the incident, Zwanziger ruled out third party involvement and revealed several notes had been discovered in Rafati’s room.

Follow Jerrad Peters on Twitter @peterssoccer

Editor’s note: the Footy Blog is pleased as punch to welcome James Horncastle to the masthead. Horncastle is a European Football Writer, Fox Soccer and FourFourTwo Columnist, Guest Podder on Guardian Football Weekly, contributor to The Blizzard, Champions, WSC and more. This is will be the first of a bi-weekly column. Enjoy!

Few managers are genuinely in tune with their supporters. But Jürgen Klopp can claim to be quite literally in harmony with those at Borussia Dortmund. “I can now sing along with their songs from beginning to end,” he boasted to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

One wonders then if Klopp, smiling politely in his track-suit bottoms and yellow baseball cap after an emphatic 5-1 win over Wolfsburg before the international break, decided to join in with the
fans at the Westfalenstadion to chant: “Off with Bayern’s lederhosen.”

With that in mind, thank goodness Louis van Gaal is no longer in charge at the Allianz Arena. He might well have taken them up on their offer and dropped his trousers to reveal that “he had balls”, as he once did much to the players’ shock in the Bayern dressing room. Luca Toni, incidentally, has never recovered.
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