BLOG POSTS ARCHIVE - February 2007
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.
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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Posted Feb 12th 2007, 2:17pm
Will Schalke crack next?
It’s been an odd sort of few weeks since the Bundesliga returned after the mid-season break. Bayern Munich disintegrated in a style about as spectacularly as a posse of English penalty takers, Bremen seemed to be on track for the title before cracking under the pressure, and Schalke 04 have marched on … and on.
This evening Bayern had the chance to make up lost ground on a Champions League place and even apply a modicum of pressure on the leaders. They started against Arminia Bielefeld without two players who can at least be relied on to run about a bit with a bit more vigour than a Bernard Matthews turkey: the suspended Schweinsteiger and the injured Hargreaves.
After the ineptitude of previous months, the first ten minutes seemed to herald a new dawn for returnee manager Ottmar Hitzfeld’s team. Unbelievably, Bayern had drive, an aim, and, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I would never had believed it, they capped it all by scoring a goal. And it was downhill from there. Ok, they didn’t lose, but slowly but surely they retreated into their big red shell and stopped playing. But at least they won, which cannot be said for early season rivals Werder Bremen.
With the exception of one or two players and the occasional flashes of genius by Diego Bremen were awful. Unlike Bayern for the past few months, they are still trying to play decent football, but something’s gone slightly haywire since the title race opened up for them. They’ve cracked. Bottled it. Lost the plot. They should be light years ahead of leaders Schalke.
Schalke should always have been challenging for the title, but they were that bothered posing and posturing and fighting amongst themselves that they stopped playing. But then, before Christmas, they started to show what they were all about (and I don’t mean the fighting, although they were rather good at it) and slowly picked up points. Since the winter break they have been excellent, with even the much-maligned Kevin Kuranyi performing well. He scored on his recall to the German team this week, this after being humiliated by doing pre-World Cup TV adverts before being dumped from the squad by nice man Klinsi.
Bayern and Bremen have both been top, been hot favourites, then collapsed. The question now is whether Schalke can withstand the heat in the Bundesliga Küche.
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Posted Feb 9th 2007, 6:26pm
It's not second-choice-Steve's fault. The FA should have listened to Boro fans
I would like to say, "I told you so." But I won't.
Just as most Boro fans have long known, Steve McClaren may be a good coach (apparently confirmed by Roy Keane, of all people), but he’s no manager and he never will be.
Of course, he should go, but it’s also unfair to sack a manager after a handful of games; if you ever thought that there was no chance of winning anything under Sven, it’s even less likely under Mac. Managers may change, but the ineptitude of the FA is eternal
Fortunately, I couldn’t see the England embarrassment against Spain over here in Munich. I watched an average Germany side easily beat a decent Switzerland team. That a team as obviously limited as Germany can stroll to a World Cup semi-final, see off less-than-average sides such as the Swiss and still instil fear in much more talented sides speaks volumes.
There cannot be a more pessimistic nation than Germany. The best social system in the EU, the best transport system and the biggest exporters in the world (ok they have huge unemployment problems, but this is changing) and an economy, unlike Gordon Brown’s, that is not based on rampant consumerism, which will eventually implode. But go on the Straße and talk to your average German and they’ll whinge about how they’ve never had it so bad. My only reaction is to sigh, “Try following the England bloody footie team! Then you’ll know real failure.”
Before the 2006 World Cup every German fan I spoke to told me that the best Germany could hope for was not to be humiliated on home territory. And they were terrible … before the tournament, that is. Gerrard, Rooney, Cole (probably both), Ferdinand, Neville, Lampard. Everyone single one, plus more, would get in the German team. Few German players would get a look in – if talent were the criteria – in the England team. But as recent German teams have shown, it’s not only about talent.
Get a new manager, or coach, or whatever it’s called nowadays, and get the players playing simple English-style football. We can’t keep the ball as well as the Dutch or Argentines, we haven’t the skill of the Brazilians, we don’t have the intelligence and durability of the Germans, but we have a little bit of everything, and bags of commitment for good measure. Old fashioned? Probably. It’ll probably come unstuck now and then, but whether it’s a manger from the British Isles or from Outer Mongolia matters not one jot – it must be better than what we’ve had for the past few years.
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Posted Feb 7th 2007, 8:44pm
The bottler’s of Bremen?
Mid-week internationals normally give fans a break from worrying about the ups and downs of club football. But don’t expect fans of Bayern Munich and Werder Bremen to be spending too long worrying about Ballack’s amazing lack of form in England or Odonkor’s amazing lack of success in Spain, and what this means to Germany’s Euro 2008 hopes. After massively disappointing weekend defeats, Bayern and Bremen have got more than enough to be worrying about.
Looking at the Bundesliga table, you may think that Bremen’s hot shots have nothing to worry about. They sit expectantly in second place, just waiting for top of the table Schalke 04 to stumble. It wouldn’t take much: a win here for Bremen, a loss there for Schalke. Not hard to imagine, is it?
Try telling that to manager Thomas Schaarf, who last weekend saw his hot title favourites humbled at home against former-‘crisis club’, the above mentioned, Schalke. On Friday evening, as he sat watching Bayern Munich get humiliated against Nuremberg, Schaarf knew that were Bremen to beat Schalke, his team would, if not exactly wrap up this season’s title, make winning the title about as probable as February snow in the Alps. The plan would have been: beat Schalke – hold our nerve, and the title’s ours.
Plans, eh? Who needs them? Instead of three points ahead of Schalke (with an infinitely better goal difference to boot), Bremen lost when the pressure was really on. In fact they made such a hash of it that Bremen could be accused of bottling it. Only time will reveal whether Bremen are a team of bottlers or whether the defeat was a soon-to-be-forgotten stumble on their march to the title.
While a home defeat against Schalke has far from ended their title hopes, Schalke are in the Bundesliga driving seat and Bremen now have it all to prove. And remember, in three week’s time, Bremen have got the big one: Bayern away. Then we can truly judge whether they really are bottlers or not.
And more on Bayern? It'll have to wait until I've watched England thrash Spain tonight!
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Posted Feb 6th 2007, 5:38pm
Woodgate would, if he could
Whether Jonathan Woodgate plays for England on Wednesday night against Spain, or he simply keeps McClaren’s bench warm, is in the long run neither here not there. Since his loan move to the Boro, he’s played well over 20 games for his hometown club this season, and that in itself is an achievement.
Watching him play for Leeds all those years ago made Boro fans green with envy. He has, and still seems to have, the lot: pace, agility, toughness and he’s a phenomenal reader of the game. He’s certainly good enough for Real Madrid (but there again, the way they are playing, I’m good enough for them as well) and though there is still doubt – the recent announcement that the Boro and Madrid had agreed a fee doesn’t seem to be anything new – that he will sign a long-term deal at Middlesbrough, he’s already a real hero there.
Reading his comments in today’s Guardian, Woodgate could well sign for the Boro – providing Middlesbrough make big signings in the summer. We don’t need the Ravenelli and Emerson scenario (ala 1997/8) to manifest itself again, but a couple of reasonably expensive signings that act to complement the great youth system on Teesside, would not go amiss.
The important point, which I’m sure Boro chairman Steve Gibson has learned, albeit the hard way, is that the players must fit in to the Boro style of play (which is increasingly exciting) and pay structure. If not, they’re not needed.
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Posted Feb 5th 2007, 8:05pm
What price loyalty?
A few short weeks ago ever-increasing doubts surrounded the sanity of Steve Gibson’s appointment of Gareth Southgate as Boro manager in succession to Steve ‘I don’t know the meaning of the word excitment’ McClaren. Watching the Boro on Premier.de – from the sunny though freezing climes of Bavaria, southern Germany – hammer Bolton 5-1 last week made me think what all the worry was all about. Watching Boro compete in such a confident manner against an excellent Arsenal side dispelled any doubts whatsoever about Sir Gareth’s suitability.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s made mistakes, and he’ll make even more, probably bigger, mistakes in the months and years ahead. But unlike the much-disliked Steve McClaren, when Gareth says he’s here for the long haul, not interested in using the Boro as a stepping-stone to a bigger club, somehow you believe him. On the one hand McClaren talked the talk, but unfortunately it was secret negotiations with Leeds and Newcastle while still Boro manager (it wasn't only the boring footie that made him increasingly unpopular). Contrast this with Southgate: he wisely doesn’t pretend that Boro can ever be a Manchester United or Liverpool (anyone can be a Cheslea), but he does use the great Ipswich teams under Bobby Robson in the eighties and Boro boy Cloughie’s Nottingham Forest teams as his models.
As usual, Boro chairman Steve Gibson deserves a lot of credit for sticking by his man when many others would have shown Gareth the door. The loyalty reciprocated by the manager in his recent comments about staying the course highlight a characteristic that means increasingly little in today’s game.
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Posted Feb 5th 2007, 7:29pm
Bayern: different manager – same result
The appointment of old favourite Ottmar Hitzfeld until the end of the current Bundesliga season will steady the Good Ship Bayern, won’t it? Not on the evidence of tonight, it won’t. A resurgent Nuremberg were tonight’s opponents for Bayern and Nuremberg wiped the floor with their Bavarian neighbours with a convincing 3-0 win.
The early stages of the game seemed to offer incipient glimpses of the heralding of a new dawn. Nothing major mind, but glimpses of attacking play and a new, more relaxed style. Owen Hargreaves, just named England’s player of the year (deservedly, although the competition was hardly difficult), was back to partner van Bommel in midfield while Schweinsteiger returned to the left, and all was set was a storming performance. Few mentioned that the storming performance would be by Nuremberg.
Bayern’s early promise simply evaporated into thin air once Sajenko scored in the twelfth minute. The self doubts and laboured build up play returned as though Hitzfeld was merely Magath in disguise (admittedly a good disguise as Magath’s a bit rotund-ish around the jowell area and Hitzfeld’s a bit hang-dogish nowadays). Bayern did show some much-needed spirit once Schroth had scored Nuremeberg's second in the 71 minute, but they had neither the guile nor the craft to unduly trouble Nuremberg.
On this showing Hitzfeld’s return will not bring the championship to Bayern. But one defeat is just one defeat and once he gets his feet under the tactics board he should make some progress in restoring the players’ self belief. The Bundesliga’s gone and fighting for a Champions League spot is now the aim. And in a couple of weeks Bayern entertain Real Madrid, another ailing has-been team. There’s still plenty to fight for this season – and that’s the first thing Hitzfeld will be drumming into his players’ heads at the next Säbener Strasse training session.
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