Here are Borussia Mönchengladbach wunderkind Marko Marin and Canadian striker Rob Friend sporting fake moustaches, in honour of their Dutch coach Jos Luhukay, who likes to wear his facial hair this way and who guided Gladbach back to the Bundesliga.

• Anna had a little present for Bayern Munich. (Stuttgart Offside)
• Stuttgart finally get a dedicated football stadium arena. (Stuttgart Offside)
• Tim Wiese is walking in Toni Schumacher’s shadow. (Bundesliga Offside)
• Scarfs for girls or scarfs for fans? (Bundesliga Offside)
• Kaka and Eto’o could be playing for Berlin next season. (Hertha Offside)
• It took Hamburg’s professional coach scouting task force six months to sign Martin Jol. (Hamburg Offside)
• Angela had written a remarkable, insightful, funny, knowledgeable and witty blog post when suddenly… (Bayern Offside)

Football in Germany has long been savoured as one of the last male refuges. As such anything pink has so far been exclusively reserved for Tim Wiese and his skin tight goalkeeper jerseys. But the times are changing and through the years more and more girls started to wrap their minds around the passive offside rule and began heading to the stadiums. The male fan had to get used to the fact that the drunk and swearing person to his right could now be a woman. The club bosses got used to the fact that a whole new market segment opened up to them, ready to finance their expensive squads. And they updated their fan gear accordingly.

For Eintracht Frankfurt fans their club has now gone one step too far though. In times where their beloved Waldstadion has been completely re-branded to Commerzbank Arena, the name and colours (black, white and red) of the club become ever more valuable in defining its’ identity. And a pink and white scarf doesn’t really fit in here. So Frankfurt fans have now started a “STOP PINK!” campaign. In their words:

By wearing a fan-scarf you identify with your club and with its colours. Which colours do you identify with, when this scarf has the colour pink? In most cases the wearer of this scarf isn’t making his/her mind up about what they are expressing with it.

Pink is not one of Eintracht’s club colours!

So you can throw your support behind this campaign by signing their petition, or you could discuss it here in the comments.

via: 5 Freunde im Abseits

1. Bremen and Schalke win Champions League race.
Both Hamburg and Stuttgart bagged impressive victories during the weekend, keeping the slim hope that they could still beat either Bremen or Schalke to their Champions League spot alive. Hamburg were hosting Bremen on Wednesday, and a derby victory would have reduced Bremen’s lead to just three points with two matches to go. Something which would have been to Stuttgart’s liking as well, who could have closed in on Bremen with a victory over Dortmund. Schalke had to visit Bochum to play out a small Revierderby. Bochum had only lost one game at home this season, so there was hope Schalke could drop points here as well.

That’s the theory. The reality produced a rare Borussia Dortmund victory (3-2). Alexander Frei bagged a brace, which should come as good news to all the Switzerland fans ahead of the Euros. Mario Gomez bagged a brace as well, which would come as good news to Germany fans, if we weren’t spoiled and used to his heroics by now. Hamburg then lost 1-0 against Bremen in a dirty epic (minus the epic), which produced eight yellow and two red cards. With five of the yellow and all red cards going to Bremen. Meanwhile Schalke confidently beat Bochum 3-0 effectively ending both Hamburg’s and Stuttgart’s Champions League hopes.

That means Bayern were the only team who could break into the Champions League places; at the expense of Stuttgart. Kudos to the Bavarians for keeping the league open and unpredictable.

2. Mario Gomez sneaks up on Luca Toni.
Gomez scored three goals in the last two matches to take his goal tally to 18. That’s still three goals short of Luca Toni. Though, when we can spend a whole season pretending there’s a title race going on, we can also pretend Mario Gomez has a chance for the golden boot also known as Torjägerkanone in Germany.

3. Tim Wiese sneaks up on Ivica Olic.
Just when Tim Wiese decides to sneak up on somebody it looks like this.

4. Werder Bremen are on the verge of becoming a big club.
A truly big club should be loved and loathed in equal proportions. Werder Bremen have so far received way too much love for their clever scouting and attractive attacking football to be considered a big club. But this season has seen some baby-steps in the right direction. There have been some campaigns to denounce Diego as a diver - even though they came from a club whose Italian hitman goes down suspiciously easy as well - and the team gets away with some atrocious fouls, followed by atrocious comments. That’s a start.

5. Schalke win the Ruhr Valley Championship.
Or Grand Slam. Schalke haven’t been German champions for 50 years, and Dortmund are already planing festivities to commemorate the event. But at least they are the undisputed kings of the Ruhr Valley this season, by beating Dortmund, Duisburg and Bochum away and at home.
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To make the Tim Wiese is a villain story complete, he also made a few good saves, when he should have no longer been on the pitch and sent a goal kick into Hamburg’s half, that would lead to the winning goal.

I have the rare honour to spell the names Valeri Domovchiyski and Lukas Sinkiewicz in the same sentence. Valeri plays for Hertha and Lukas plays for Leverkusen. The two played against each other on Wednesday. Hertha ended up putting more misery on Leverkusen and more pressure on Michael Skibbe, as they won the match 2-1.

The cast for the The Mannschaft Movie is slowly assembling itself.

Kudos to Wolfsburg for the idea. Presenting a bouquet of flowers to beer showered footballers makes a great picture.

Not to take anything away from the aforementioned beer showers… (more…)

Bayern Munich have secured the Bundesliga title. A 0-0 draw against Wolfsburg was enough.

Congratulations. Head over to the Bayern Munich Offside to celebrate a wild blog party. Or you can discuss the new signings Bayern’s competitors need to make to be champions, over at the Hamburg, Stuttgart, Bremen (needs a blogger) or Schalke Offside.

Or hang out at the Hertha Offside, if you despise glory hunters.

And then there is the Dortmund Offside for the undecided.