Weekly Dose 13.01.10
By: Jan | January 13th, 2010- A media empire, a student revolt, a suicide and Germany’s sports photo of the century. (ESPN Soccernet)
- The best and worst Bundesliga XI of the Hinrunde. (Deutsche Welle)
- The Bundesliga got the talent, now everybody else needs to stop having the money. (Deutsche Welle)
- Meet Jünter. (Who ate all the Pies)
- You can follow the Hertha Offside and Abby on Twitter. (awfully_good)
- You can listen to a podcast, where Abby talks Bundesliga and retells the tragic events more commonly known as Hertha’s season. (mao’s Football)
- You can follow the Bayern Offside on Twitter as well. (Bayern_Offside)
And in case you haven’t noticed it already, two of our team bloggers have added some more 2.0 activities to their CVs.
Some Related Bundesliga Posts:
Category: Bundesliga
Comments
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From Deutsche Welle:
“Leverkusen’s Kiessling is having the season of his life so far, leading the Bundesliga with his team and the scoring charts with 12 goals. The rangy forward is enjoying a prolific partnership with Patrick Helmes and has earned himself a recall to the Germany squad on the back of his stunning form.”Considering Helmes has been injured all this season, one can only presume this prolific partnership is a civil one. I for one congratulate the pair, and think they make a lovely couple. To describe the relationship as ‘prolific’ is a slightly unnecessary detail, but adds to the colour of the piece admittedly.
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I’m glad you have posted the link to the article from ESPN Soccernet. I really enjoyed reading it. It is something which I do not know anything about, apart from that Axel Springer is a media mogul.
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Hey there folks, any good english language podcasts on german bundesliga?
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I agree with Joe. That the article describes his ’stunning form’ is also slightly disconcerting.
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@diana: I enjoyed reading it too and didn’t know the story of Axel Springer Jr either.
@Joa and Benjamin:
@mike: Raphael Honigstein is sometimes talking about the Bundesliga on the Guardian Football Weekly podcast. But I don’t know of any Bundesliga specific podcasts out there.
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I got a kick out of reading the Deutsche Welle best and worst 11 for the season so far in the Bundesliga, it is pretty easy to see the bias there against Bayern when not one player on the team was in the first 11 and the team sits third in the table two points back of Leverkusen. I thought those guys are supposed to be proffesional to some degree ans put there bias aside, but no luck there. I guess when the season is over and Bayern take the title maybe then they will take there sunglasses off?
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Bayern fans also tend to wear their sunglasses with pride, and I grant people a certain degree of bias.
Although, the only real problem I have with the selection is the backline without any fullbacks. Apart from that it’s a good selection of players. The only Bayern player I may have nominated would be Butt, though not because of his overall level of performance, but because he simply had the biggest impact with a few decisive saves.
What other Bayern players are you missing?
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How many CB’s have had a better first half than Van Buyten? Is there another CB in the Bundesliga that defends and leads his team that well and scores big goals too? If there is please clue me in because I haven’t seen him on the field playing for anybody! And I am well aware that the sentimental pick is Sammy from Leverkusen, but I don’t think he has the all around game that Van Buyten does.
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Calling Hyypiä a sentimental pick is unfair. He made a big difference organizing and running the whole Leverkusen defense.
“Is there another CB in the Bundesliga that defends and leads his team that well and scores big goals too? If there is please clue me in because I haven’t seen him on the field playing for anybody!”
If goalscoring is important then Naldo is that CB. Otherwise players like Geromel, Bordon, Hummels et al are valid cases for CBs who are better than van Buyten, who is playing a good season as well of course. But there’s no anti Bayern bias for me, if you don’t pick vB or Badstuber for the best XI.
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Sorry, I don’t agree on the Naldo being a great defender, yes he can score goals, but I have seen too many of Bremen’s games over the years and their defense has never been their strong point, it has been their weakness if anything! Has Hyypia done any more for Leverkusen than Van Buyten has for Bayern? I really doubt it.
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Bremen defended high up the field over the past years meaning a lot of embarrassing moments where opposing teams beat the offside trap and have a lot of space or are free through on goal, which made Naldo and Mertesacker also look worse than they are. But this season Bremen plays more “conservative”, so the trademark bad defending of Bremen is gone. On an individual level both Naldo and Mertesacker are excellent defenders. Also, if you factor in past years then you would need to do that for van Buyten as well, which in turn would make him look worse than he is playing at the moment.
Hyypiä’s positioning and anticipation are better than van Buyten’s. Also watch the match against Schalke and look what happens – or doesn’t happen – while Hyypiä is on the pitch and look what happened after he had to be substituted with an injury. It was almost night and day. Anyway, I wouldn’t be offended by best XI’s including van Buyten either.
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