BLOG POSTS
Posted Mar 9th 2007, 1:14pm
Is big club success in Europe good for national leagues?
As far as the rest of the Bundesliga is concerned, Bayern Munich’s progression to the quarter-finals of the Champions League will come as mixed news. On the one hand, for getting to the next round Bayern will get €2.5 million from UEFA with which to either put in the bank alongside the reported €130 million currently collecting dust there, or to use it for further team strengthening. In fact, fussball24.de reckons Bayern have banked around €11.8 million from UEFA so far in their Champions League run, which could rise to an incredible total in takings of nearly €40 million for winning a semi-final spot.
For teams such as Alemannia Achen, who will lose young striker Jan Schlaudraff, and likewise, Schalke 04, who’ll lose Turkish midfielder Hamit Altintop, both to Bayern in the summer, even more cash to spend for the Bavarians is hardly news to celebrate.
On the other hand, however, the better Bundesliga teams do in all European competitions – currently including both Werder Bremen and Bayer Leverkusen in the UEFA CUP – the better the chances are of increasing – or, indeed, holding onto – the number of German representatives in European competitions in coming seasons. This is, indeed, no different to the English Premier League or Spain's La Liga.
UEFA in(co)efficiency
This is, of course, based on each country’s coefficient, disgracefully calculated – as far as I can see – by UEFA to ensure big nation and big club representation. For less successful footballing nations this is similar to a vicious circle, but one they’d rather like to hurl themselves into, but can’t afford the entrance fee: the most successful clubs get more money and then get seeded in future years. The more money they get from UEFA means better players, meaning more success and more money etc. etc. ad infinitum.
As many objective fans (ok, a touch oxymoronic) would agree, a stronger Bayern in Europe would be better for the overall health of the Bundesliga because of the increased European places it should provide. But if this means the competitiveness of this season’s Bundesliga is merely a blip, and Bayern go on to win the title 12 times out of the next 20, as they have in the past twenty years, the words “competitiveness” and the “Bundesliga” will rarely be mentioned in the same breath.
As I’ve mentioned many times before, Bundesliga tickets – including to see Bayern at the Allianz – are cheap when compared to the English Premier League. It’s not Bayern’s fault that much of the summit of European football is more concerned about exploiting fan loyalty than providing a semblance of an even playing field.
Posted Mar 7th 2007, 3:27pm
Exclusive interview with Bayern Munich's Philipp Lahm
Exclusive interview with Bayern Munich's Philipp Lahm - including Philipp's views on Bayern vs Real Madrid, Bayern's season so far and chances of Bundesliga success
Paul Wheatley in Munich
See the Guardian for my interview with Philipp Lahm: http://football.guardian.co.uk/championsleague200607/story/0,,2028367,00.html
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Posted Feb 26th 2007, 10:20am
Reduce prices in the Premier League? Things are just fine in the Bundesliga
Nothing is as it should be in this topsy-turvy and highly entertaining Bundesliga season. While chairman in the English Premier League are staggered to discover that high prices have hit attendances (they now paint themselves as the fans’ biggest supporters in getting prices reduced – strange that they’ve said nothing for fifteen years when prices were going though the roof) the Bundesliga has bigger attendances and, especially this season, has a great competitive edge.
Not everything is rosy, of course. There is a worry that the reported 100 million euro shirt sponsorship of Schalke by Russian gas giant Gazprom could herald the beginning of too much big money influence, as in the Premier League. But the current Bundesliga season is as competitive and exciting as many in recent memory.
Bayern are nine points behind leaders Schalke 04, who managed to lose at home against Blackburn’s conquerors, Bayer Leverkusen on Sunday. Anyone who has watched the Bundesliga this season will know that Schalke may now be top, but they probably won’t remain there for long. Bayern, Werder Bremen and Schalke have all looked likely champions – only to unaccountably collapse when expectations and the pressure were highest. Most recently Werder Bremen have come off the rails in spectacular fashion.
Led by brilliant Brazilian midfield wizard Diego, before the winter break Werder looked unstoppable. Now they look like a team in shock. If they can’t steamroller teams, they don’t have a plan “B”. Much to trainer Thomas Shaarf’s total surprise, teams have worked out that the little Brazilian makes Werder tick. Stop Diego and Bremen are like a team of lemmings – they keep going forward, which is great entertainment for the neutral, but they don’t really know why they’re going forward. Werder have the players to have sown up the title weeks ago, but it seems that Thomas Shaarf didn’t take into account that other teams may have used the winter break to work out how to counter Werder predilection to attack.
Maybe Schalke, who have not won for two games, will defy this season's topsy-turvy nature of the Bundesliga and romp home. But it's unpredictable and is likely to be thrilling, whatever happens. The Bundesliga doesn’t have the overall quality of the Premier League. But it also doesn’t have the fan cynicism manifested from inflated wages and ticket prices that the self-styled “best league in the world” suffers from.
More fans, more goals and cheaper prices than the Premier League. And now the Bundesliga is proving to be more competitive than the Premier League. Maybe I’m too cynical, but I don’t see Premier League chairman dramatically changing things any time soon. There’s just too much money to be made by exploiting fans. In England it’s the usual three or four fighting to be named champions. Over here, in Germany, I’ll just keep watching and enjoying the twists and turns of this wonderful Bundesliga season.
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Posted Feb 25th 2007, 9:56pm
Not only an important goal for Bayern
Mark van Bommel’s excellent late strike against Real Madrid in Tuesday evening’s Champions League game could prove to be a godsend for more than turning Bayern Munich’s woeful season around. As well as providing a much-needed fillip that could manifest some much needed Bundesliga form, the goal might kick-start van Bommel’s hit-and-miss Bayern career.
In the wake of his much talked about summer move from 2006 Champions League winners Barcelona (hence the “Up yours!” celebration to Real fans), van Bommel was labelled as everything from Bayern’s new leader, playmaker and midfield kingpin to Bayern strongman and now Hitzfeld’s very own on-field enforcer. None of the labels have been entirely tenuous; neither have the labels been particularly accurate either. Somehow van Bommel has the amazing ability to be both a success and failure at the same time.
For those wanting a direct replacement for the much-criticised Ballack (yes, criticism of not doing enough is not new) he hasn’t been creative enough; for those who want a dynamic Steven Gerrad-like player, he just isn’t … well, dynamic enough.
Proof of whether van Bommel can hit the expected heights will probably come pretty soon. Tomorrow Bayern play an absolutely must-win game against a Wolfsburg team that past Bayern teams wouldn’t have batted an eyelid at – before batting them away with a comprehensive thrashing. And the old jibe that “We hate Bayern because they’re so arrogant,” is difficult to uphold when the team plays like an apologetic bunch of ballet dancers. This Bayern team isn’t packed with the stars of yesteryear – it’s hardly even packed with well-known players inside Bavaria. “Hollywood FC”, Bayern’s past moniker, this definitely is not.
A convincing win against Wolfsburg may signal a pick-up in league form and herald a concerted push at winning a Champions League place. Pass that and then comes the big test: despised rivals Real Madrid in the Champions League second leg on 7 March. Van Bommel’s late goal could prove to be one of those intriguing turning points. It could, however, merely prove to be a short high in a miserable season for Bayern Munich. And whether the goal is remembered as the determining factor in Bayern progressing, could determine van Bommel’s next label for Bayern.
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Posted Feb 18th 2007, 7:41pm
The Bundesliga is the world’s best – at diving
"For me the swallow is like the rape of sport.” Honestly, according to the German tabloid Bild am Sonntag (ok, maybe I’m stretching the meaning of the word “honestly” too far) Bayern Munich’s general manager Uli Hoeneß said this. Confused? Let me explain. The German "Schwalbe" is translated into English as "swallow" and is used to describe when players dive – in other words cheat – to get a free kick, penalty or whatever. You know what I mean.
Think Christiano Ronaldo before he cleaned up his act ... a bit – then times it by ten. That’s how widespread diving is in German football. The most astonishing thing now, however (with the obvious exception of Hoeneß using the unsavoury analogy of rape, which is crass to say the least), is that after nearly five years of watching German football – from close up and from afar – and despairing about this cheating, a nascent debate about diving seems to be manifesting itself – almost from nowhere.
To my own frustration, I have on many occasions asked German football fans their opinions about the incessant desire of German footballers to every few minutes jump in the air as if molested by 500 crazed wasps, descend to the ground clutching all manner of body parts before – and this is surely the embarrassing bit – doing at least two agonised rolls while at the same time biting clumps of grass from a perfectly manicured football pitch – all in front of tens of thousands of people. The most popular reply to such an outlandish question is a simple shrug that Thierry Henry would be hard pressed to better. In short, it’s never been an issue. Never bothered them.
General manager at Werder Bremen, Klaus Allofs, gave his unswerving support to the Bayern general manager. Allofs was unlikely to publicly disagree with Hoeneß, but he revealed hitherto unknown enmity to diving every bit as passionate as his opposite number in Bavaria. Perhaps not in the Hoeneß class of analogies, but he did his best by comparing players who dive to “sly dogs” (that’s my translation, anyway). He then went on to tell his captivated audience that this behaviour is “obviously unacceptable”. Obviously!
It would be interesting to discover where Allofs was looking on the many occasions when Bremen striker Miroslav Klose was doing his best to resemble a pack of collapsing cards at the merest whiff of a sweaty defender. A case of myopia or amnesia. Probably both. And what of Werder’s Tim Borowski. A fine player, but surely he has Olympic diving medals – in at least two events: the short, quick swallow; and the long, painful and admittedly much trickier swallow, which for good measure is more often than not followed by not two but usually three grass-eating rolls.
I could fill the next five blogs with examples of dextrous, extravagant but soon-forgotten Bundesliga dives. It is the single most annoying aspect of an otherwise excellent football league.
The truth is that most players in the Bundesliga will dive, given the chance. The question now that the swallow has been let out of the bag is what are the Hoeneßes and Aloffs going to do about it? My guess is nothing.
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Posted Feb 15th 2007, 12:03pm
More games, more money?
Germany and Bayern Munich football legend Franz Beckenbauer wants UEFA to reintroduce a second group stage to the Champions League. Seems crazy to me.
While everyone from UEFA to the G-14 want the English Premier league to cut the number of its clubs in order to reduce the amount of games top stars play, it is often the same voices desperately calling for the extra Champions League games. Contradiction? Course not!
The David Deins and the Franz Beckenbauers of this world can whine all they want about wanting to give punters more top-quality, exciting football, but it seems obvious to me that the clubs and UEFA merely want to create extra revenue. As usual it’s the paying public – whether at the gate, on TV or through buying whatever advertisers are selling – that ultimately pay.
Crowds are down in the Premier League and Arsenal have recently admitted that they don’t have full houses, even though most tickets are sold. It seems that some Arsenal season-ticket holders have enough money to pay the inflated ticket prices, but not enough time to get to the games. Must be terrible for them.
Dein’s perennial gripe is that Arsenal can’t compete against the top clubs because they don’t have the resources. So his answer is to create more games for the elite, while cutting the Premier League. More European games won’t make Arsenal richer in comparison to other top clubs, but it will ensure that “the rest” will be left even further behind.
Franz! Watch this video and have a think about how football used to be (on tele, anyway!).
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Posted Feb 13th 2007, 1:23pm
The attack philosophy according to Gareth
As England fans will soon come to appreciate, not only is Stevie Second-Choice-Mac not a particularly good football manager, he is also one of the most negative managers in football.
As the FA announced that Mac was to take up the position as England manager, the collective sigh of relief emanated all the way from Middlesbrough, over the North Sea, across the Low Countries, hovered around the Rühr Gebiet in northwestern German to take a breath, before taking a last leap towards the Bavarian Alps to me in Munich.
Season tickets had been given up, thrown away and forgotten about on Teesside ever since Steve arrived. Gareth Southgate’s transformation into new Boro manager didn’t exactly set the famous Teesside skyline alight either, but at least he didn’t tell us that he “didn’t know the meaning of excitement”. Instead, he told us that the long dark nights would soon be over. And of course, he was wrong. Shortly before Christmas, not only were we playing rubbish football, but were locked in a relegation battle – or would have been if things didn’t soon change.
What did Gareth do? He sacked/released loyal Mac-man Steve Round, appointed Boro boy Colin Cooper, who wears footie shorts in the midst of a Boro winter to show how hard he is, and told everyone who wanted to listen that from now on it would be attack and excitement. Now he had said this before, when appointed (but who wouldn’t after Mac?)
But just as importantly, he gave the players their five-penneth-worth and, it seems, asked them if they were happy with the football they were playing. They replied something along the lines of: “Don’t be daft! It’s rubbish! And while you're at it Garath, it was you who verbally laid into boring Steve last year.”
Southgate has most noticeably succeeded in freeing winger Stewart Downing from his seemingly eternal promise to Mac to never to cross the half way line. And Downing even promised to take on his full back and deliver great crosses – he’s been as good as his word. Just as importantly, he's got Viduka and Yakubu scaring the pants off Premiership defenders.
There’s a long way to go but things are on the up at the Boro. Long may it continue. But it’s going to be a long hard time for England fans before Mac gets sacked after Euro 2008.
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