Matchday 7: Oktoberfest in Munich

There’s too much football and too little time for me to write about it.

So as I get to sit down to quickly recap the midweek action, matchday 8 is already underway. Schalke beat Berlin 1-0 yesterday, setting up a little series of three consecutive wins and clean sheets. They are still wasting too many chances, but I’ll only criticise them for it, once they lose a match again. I hope it won’t be in their upcoming Champions League match against Trondheim. The team that drew Chelsea, sort of ended Mourinho’s reign and thus surely booked their place in Norse mythology. And if Schalke want to take at least the third place in the group, they will need a good result against them.

58 Minutes and 30 Seconds
Considering how the season unfolded so far, we probably have to readjust our perception of what constitutes a major upset and a minor upset against Bayern Munich. If one of the teams eying a Champions League spot or even the Bundesliga title hold Bayern to a draw, it should be considered a major upset. All the other less ambitious teams should settle for the minor upset as a realistic alternative. That would be an exercise in keeping the scoreline down I guess. But seeing that no one has yet achieved something below a three to five goal margin, even that might be asking a bit much. Probably we should count the minutes, that a team managed to hold Klose and Toni at bay instead. In that case congratulations to Cottbus for a fantastic 58 minutes and 30 seconds of hope. Bayern Munich nevertheless deserves some respect for scoring 5 goals in the thirty minutes that followed. Three goals and one assist were provided by Miroslav Klose, who now scored 8 goals in 6 matches. If you don’t happen to be a Bayern Munich supporter or Mark van Bommel and are now suffering from Klose-Envy head over to Angela at the Bayern Munich Offside and voice your complaints about Uli Hoeneß and Munich’s bank account, that was bursting at the seams before Uli got the idea to take some money from it for a change.

Hamburg’s Minimalism and Dortmund’s Blunderism
Here’s a little party trick that David Blaine shared with me, when we were watching the Dortmund vs Hamburg match in a water filled sphere on Tuesday: claim you can predict the exact result of any Hamburg match by the number of goals scored by the opposition. Add an extra wow effect by claiming that you don’t even need to know the name of the team that played against Hamburg. How it works: if the other team didn’t score, Hamburg won the match 1-0. If the other team scored one goal, the match ended in a 1-1 draw. And if the other team scored two or more goals, Hamburg lost by that many goals to one. There is a catch however: if they choose this week’s Dortmund match, you’ll be doomed.

And I blame it all on Dortmund’s defence and Roman Weidenfeller that this freak result, with Hamburg scoring 3 goals, could have happened. And I’m not the only one, as the fans and media blame Weidenfeller as well. Thomas Doll doesn’t blame him, and that’s probably the good news for him. If you want less blame and more analysis on this matter, you should check out the article Chris wrote over at Bundesliga Talk. If you feel pity for Dortmund, head over to the Dortmund Offside and offer Steven your condolences or free hugs.

Bremen’s Injurism
Just when I thought that Bremen could build some momentum from Diego’s excellent form, they lose yet another player and two more points. Frank Baumann is normally not a key player for Bremen’s midfield, but with so many key players on the injury list, even the loss of Frank Baumann for six weeks feels like loosing a key player I guess. So he couldn’t play against Wolfsburg on Tuesday and Bremen couldn’t win. Diego did his job and scored the lead but Josue got the equaliser 18 minutes later. From what I’ve heard it was a just result and Per Mertesacker is on record as saying something like “In our current situation, we have to be happy with getting a point here.” Less depressing news come from Clemens Fritz and Tim Borowski who joined the team’s training sessions again. Both probably won’t be seen in action on the pitch this weekend, and I don’t know whether I can have any hopes for the Champions League match either.

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Category: Bundesliga