Rookie Coach of the Year. Also known as the Markus Babbel Trophy. Mainz 05’s coach Thomas Tuchel had been the only contender for this prestigious prize until Bochum appointed Heiko Herrlich. Herrlich didn’t have the best of starts, losing 2-1 to Frankfurt, but we’ll have to wait and see, whether he can turn it around at his club. Something that Tuchel already did in impressive fashion with Mainz. This weekend his Mainz side came back twice to draw with Wolfsburg (3-3) and grab their 18th point. 18 points don’t guarantee you a spot in next season’s Bundesliga, but it’s probably safe to say, that Mainz will be part of it nonetheless. That’s surely disappointing news for all the clubs at the bottom, who had hoped for Mainz to have a stranglehold on one of the two direct relegation spots. The Markus Babbel Trophy is not just an honor though, but also a warning, as Stuttgart are proving this season. Time will tell whether Thomas Tuchel is the next big thing in Bundesliga coaching, or just a one-hit wonder – even if it’s one claiming to have a clear vision, tactical concept, a large DVD collection and all that.

Blame Games. Hamburg decided to take things as they come and not complain too much about their ever more prominent injury list. They were playing well enough indeed and backup players stepped up to take responsibility. Hamburg drew with Leverkusen, but could argue that Leverkusen came to park the bus. Hamburg drew with Schalke, but could argue that they had to play with ten men in the second half. Hamburg lost against Mönchengladbach but are running out of arguments this time around. The blame for the defeat and for wasting the third consecutive chance to take over the top of the table is now handed back and forth between Jerome Boateng and Bruno Labbadia. Boateng had received a knock from Gladbach’s striker Raul Bobadilla and was in pain throughout the second half. He signaled that he would like to play on and stated later that he didn’t want to let his team down – there were no central defenders left on the bench. Yet, it was more than obvious for all to see that Boateng was no longer fit to play. All except Labbadia. Labbadia preferred to rely on Boateng’s error of judgement and kept him on the pitch until the 84th minute. Boateng is currently doubtful for Hamburg’s game against Celtic on Thursday by the way. Ideally, both Boateng and Labbadia will have learned a lesson from this match. One lesson Hamburg definitely haven’t learned yet though, is the one they have been taught all season long: they can’t defend their leads, independent from fit, unfit or red carded central defenders. This seems to be a general problem, similar to their tendency to completely underperform against smaller teams.

Depth. Both Leverkusen and Bremen received a lot of positive feedback for playing negative football this season. The consensus was, that both teams were less naive and more mature. In other words, both had to be considered as serious title candidates. Something which hasn’t yet been considered, when considering their title credentials, is the depth of their squads though. Leverkusen did well to compensate Patrick Helmes’ long term injury so far, thanks to Stefan Kiessling and Eren Derdiyok. They also dominated Schalke this weekend, despite missing Simon Rolfes and Renato Augusto in midfield. Yet, when Sami Hyypiä had to be substituted for Lukas Sinkiewicz, the drop in quality was immense. It probably can’t serve as the sole explanation as to why Leverkusen managed to give up a two goal lead and draw the match in the last ten minutes, but it’s still safe to say that Leverkusen have a very mediocre central defense without Hyypiä. Werder Bremen have been blessed with a mostly injury free starting eleven. The moment they lost Claudio Pizarro they also promptly struggled at Nuremberg on Saturday and needed Aaron Hunt’s last minute heroics to draw the match. But that could be a coincidence. Far more interesting will be to see, how the team reacts to the news that Torsten Frings will miss the next three weeks with a torn muscle. Werder Bremen did well to stabilize the defense this season, but they did nothing to add any depth.

Running. In the days before women cared – and were not supposed to care – about football, they denounced the sport as being a pointless game of men running after a ball for 90 minutes. Except for the pointless bit, they certainly grasped the very essence of a game, where only 1 player out of 22 is usually in control of the ball. The next best thing the other 21 players can do is to run and getting players to run remains one of the game’s biggest mysteries. This is where Lucien Favre failed and where Markus Babbel is still succeeding. Stuttgart’s players aren’t doing it in a particularly structured manner, but they are doing quite a lot of it. Enough to earn a 0-0 draw against Bayern, whose running is much more structured but still terribly uninspired.

Passing. OK, passing the ball shouldn’t be underestimated either, as Hertha proved to the world on Friday, when they failed to string together even two passes for the whole 90 minutes and subsequently failed to get anything from their game against Dortmund (2-0).

Results: Dortmund 2-0 Hertha, Wolfsburg 3-3 Mainz, Stuttgart 0-0 Bayern, Hamburg 2-3 Gladbach, Cologne 0-1 Hannover, Nuremberg 2-2 Bremen, Schalke 2-2 Leverkusen, Freiburg 0-1 Hoffenheim, Frankfurt 2-1 Bochum

• Louis van Gaal is not a god. He’s a jazz singer. (YouTube)
• Football’s winning formula revealed: give the ball to the other team and lose all your challenges. (Ballspiel)
• Mainz 05 are starting to build a global fanbase. Current fan count: 1. (The Adventures of Peter James)
• Of Cevapčići and other famous Balkan imports in Germany. (The Outsiders’ Edge)
• Stuttgart hit rock bottom. (Guardian)
• Stuttgart hit rock bottom harder. (Some People are on the Pitch)

Defense. Werder Bremen’s coach Thomas Schaaf came up with the idea after slipping and bumping his head while standing on his toilet to hang a clock. The idea came to him in a vision he had after being knocked out. He drew some tactical formations on a piece of paper, performed some calculations and then presented the idea to his team. Now Werder Bremen have gone four Bundesliga matches without conceding a goal. Werder fans will still have to get used to winning games 2-0 and 1-0 though.

Edward A. Murphy, Jr. Murphy currently resides in Berlin’s Olympiastadion. His office hours are Friday through Sunday usually from 15.30h to 17.15h CET.

Lady Luck. Is a mermaid and spared Hamburg of yet another disappointing – 2 points from the last 11 games – visit to the capital as Hamburg beat Hertha 3-1, with Hertha scoring and setting up all four goals. The question is, whether she can consistently help Hamburg for the rest of the season, or whether Bruno Labbadia has to try and build some consistency into his team’s performances for a change.

Sascha Burchert. Hertha’s 19 year old back-up keeper can now claim two assists in a career total of two Bundesliga matches. Looks good on paper. Looks silly on video.

Consistency. Hamburg may want some, Bayern have some to spare. Despite investing 75 million Euros during the tranfer window and bringing in a new experienced coach, Bayern exactly emulated last season’s start to the season. Klinsmann racked up 12 points after 8 matches and so did Louis van Gaal. Luckily for van Gaal he didn’t build lounges, libraries and turntables into Bayern’s training centre, so he currently isn’t feeling the same heat as Klinsmann did back then. With Hamburg running out of strikers fast, Uli Hoeness pointed out, that Bruno Labbadia certainly wouldn’t mind having Bayern’s abundance of expensive strikers. I’m not sure Labbadia really feels this way at the moment.

5 Kick-off Times. The Bundesliga introduced five different kick-off times this season, to help pay-TV networks sell more subscriptions. Based on the games scheduled this past weekend, the league might want to rethink that strategy. Schalke vs Frankfurt on Friday night, Borussia vs Borussia on Saturday evening or Hertha vs Hamburg on Sunday afternoon are more likely to have cost subscribers. Here’s to a more exciting matchday 9.

Thomas Tuchel. The Mainz 05 rookie coach claimed yet another prestigious scalp by beating Hoffenheim in remarkably similar fashion to his victory over Bayern. Had anyone cared to ask me prior to the season, I would have said that I’m not entirely sure, which team will get relegated alongside Mainz. With a sixth place and 14 points after 8 matchdays, Mainz cannot afford to win any more matches.

Horst Heldt. VfB Stuttgart’s sporting director wants his coach Markus Babbel to drop out of highschool – or rather the German FA’s equivalent for coaches without coaching license – to focus on his sinking and quite expensive ship. This might send out the wrong message to the kids though.

The Grinch. Leverkusen brushed aside Nuremberg 4-0, top the table and don’t like Christmas?

Results: Schalke – Frankfurt (2-0), Hannover – Freiburg (5-2), Bayern – Cologne (0-0), Leverkusen – Nuremberg (4-0), Bochum – Wolfsburg (1-1), Mainz – Hoffenheim (2-1), Borussia M’gladbach – Borussia Dortmund (0-1), Stuttgart – Werder Bremen (0-2), Hertha Berlin – Hamburg (1-3)

Or the Guardian’s weekly Honigstein column…

With a couple of lazy days during the international week coming up, it’s time to take a look at how season number 47 of the Bundesliga is shaping up so far.

NEW: A slow start to the season.
Last season the Bundesliga stormed out of the gates all guns blazing, racking up an average of 3.11 goals per game after the first four matchdays. The ratio eventually dropped to around 2.92 as the season progressed, but by then the league had already successfully drawn our attention to a small village in southern Germany and eventually to the stories behind all the weekly changing table toppers. This season, we are looking at a rather subdued start with just 2.69 goals per game so far and the realization that Hoffenheim have turned into just another Bundesliga side. But who knows what kind of compelling narratives this season can come up with as we move along. I sure hope it’s better than just telling the story of Rib and Rob(TM) and how they guided Bayern to an undisputed Bundesliga title, made all the more drab by a coach, who already had two humor bypass operations.

SAME: Hamburg’s early season form.
Last season Martin Jol’s Hamburg delivered 10 points and 11 goals in 4 matches, the top of the table and the promise of exciting and successful football. This season Bruno Labbadia’s Hamburg delivered 10 points and 12 goals in 4 matches, the top of the table and the promise of exciting and successful football. Martin Jol couldn’t quite deliver on that promise. As it turned out Hamburg had already scored 1/4 of their Bundesliga goals for the season, leaving not much room for the remaining fixtures and what little room was left was filled with way too many longballs. But Martin Jol had to do without the likes of Eljero Elia and Ze Roberto, so maybe there’s hope for a more successful campaign under Labbadia.

NEW: Hamburg’s early first half form.
Martin Jol’s Hamburg made a name for themselves as the undisputed comeback kids of the league, after his team came back from being 2-0 down in three of their four matches. This season it’s up to Hamburg to challenge the other club’s comebackability, as they usually only need three minutes for their first goal and between the 15th and 20th minute the opposition is already on a one-way street to defeat. A much more charitable attitude in the second half, means that Hamburg are not yet undisputed title candidates though.

SAME: Bayern’s “worst in…” season starts.
With just two points from three matches and an embarrassing defeat at the “Stadium at the Riven Path” in Mainz, Louis van Gaal had even one-upped Jürgen Klinsmann’s habit of producing worst ever/since results for the Bavarian giants. It was the worst start to a season since 1966 to be precise and without it, we may have never seen Arjen Robben in the Bundesliga so kudos to van Gaal.

NEW: Al Pacino pep talks.
How do you make an unfancied team like newly promoted Mainz beat Bayern Munich for the first time in most people’s memories (and those who claim to remember a Mainz victory probably also only think they do remember one, while it really never happened)? By letting Al Pacino do all the pre-game talking for you, as Mainz’s coach Thomas Tuchel did and then he just had to sit back and watch his team play the Bavarians off the park for 45 minutes.
 

 
Tuchel said, that he had some more ideas on how to motivate his team and that it doesn’t necessarily need to be a movie all the time. Whatever it was he did prior to his team’s next match against Mönchengladbach though, it didn’t work out at all and Mainz lost by two goals and two goalkeepers.

NEW: Wolfsburg’s first halves.
Wolfsburg were second best in the first 45 minutes of their matches against Stuttgart, Cologne, Hamburg and Bayern. Their firepower was enough to steal all three points from Stuttgart and Cologne, stage a brief comeback against Hamburg and threaten to equalize against Bayern in the second 45 minutes. Armin Veh argued that being defending champions means, his team could no longer counter attack as often and freely as last season. He also seems to want his team to find out for themselves, what to do instead and it usually takes one or two goals by the other team until they get a vague idea.

NEW: A large gaping hole at Bremen’s back.
Werder Bremen are currently giving the Weserstadion a little make-over and are using the opportunity to straighten the curves and remove the last remnants of the running track, leaving one end of the stadium wide open. Meanwhile, that large gaping hole in Bremen’s defense stayed the same, as exactly €0 were invested in defensive reinforcements in the summer. That’s my Werder.

SAME: Cologne’s lifeless and bloodless team.
Last year this fact was brushed over by an angry man filled with adrenaline running up and down the sidelines trying to transfer some of his surplus energy onto the team. This man is now in Turkey and was replaced by the quiet Zvonimir Soldo and his mute assistant Michael Henke. And if anything, they’ve at least helped to identify the problem.

SAME: Refereeing discussions.
Lively arguments about goal-line technology, video reviews, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th officials and whether someone’s grandma could have spotted that offside position make 2009/2010 feel very much like 2008/2009.

NEW: Refereeing decisions.
There have already been four matches without any cards whatsoever compared to a total of six matches last season. Could be a coincidence but the referee in the Hamburg – Cologne match also looked like handing out a yellow card would be the worst thing he could do during the match (while in reality he couldn’t have done any worse than allowing Hamburg to score two irregular goals). Maybe there’s been some internal agreement to optimize the number of cards shown during the matches – whether it has any positive side-effects remains to be seen though. And there are good news for the players as well, as arguing with the referee might actually and finally bear some fruits. Schalke’s Benedikt Höwedes was successfully argued out of a red card by his team mates and Hamburg’s Frank Rost even one-upped that by convincing the ref that a goal scored against him was offside.

SAME: Hertha’s win-lose formula.
0 points = Hertha play well and lose.
1 point = Hertha play badly but at least don’t concede a goal / Hertha play well but can’t score.
3 points = Hertha play badly, don’t concede a goal and Kacar scores in the 88th minute.

NEW: Hertha’s defense.
Josip Simunic went looking for rural excitement but all he did was exposing Arne Friedrich as his waterboy, incapable of wearing the captain’s armband and stabilizing a defense at the same time.

SAME: Jens Lehmann.

NEW: Stuttgart’s heavy rotation.
Give Stuttgart coach Markus Babbel some cash and a place in the Champions League and he suddenly feels like he is in Liverpool again and needs to constantly rotate every available player, coach and green keeper in and out of the starting eleven. Just 5 points from a possible 12 mean that’s not yet working out all that well for him.

SAME: Felix Almighty.
Felix Magath may have switched clubs and reduced his financial scope, but he quickly made sure, there aren’t too many people left interfering with his decision making at Schalke – with (ex-)president Josef Schnusenberg being the latest casualty. All this hasn’t turned the club into title contenders yet as Schalke pulled off a vintage 08/09 performance that ended in a 1-0 defeat to Freiburg on Saturday.

NEW: Freiburg, Nuremberg and Mainz.
Their task is to replace Bielefeld, Cottbus and Karlsruhe and as far as the football is concerned they are a definite improvement. While they all lack Bundesliga-grade firepower up front, their overall gameplan and tactical approach is quite sophisticated. How much of that will remain intact over the course of a season-long fight against relegation remains to be seen though.

SAME: Ze Roberto.
Supposedly one year older, but you couldn’t tell.

NEW: Eintracht Frankfurt’s Swagger.
A few years ago Eintracht Frankfurt were a broke diva commuting between the first and second division, with distant memories of better Bundesliga days the only thing fans could hold on to. Along came Heribert Bruchhagen and Friedhelm Funkel with their vision of an office clerk Pygmalion transformation and they succeeded. Out went the debts, the yoyo and the dreams and in came the health insurance, cubicle and the promise of a two-week holiday in Brazil once the 30 year mortgage on the stadium has been paid back. For a few seasons Eintracht fans thought this was all well and nice and solid, but as time went by, more and more realized there could be nothing more depressing than watching a football team mirroring your boring life for you every second Saturday. Thus Friedhelm Funkel had to go and Michael Skibbe, of all coaches, was assigned the task bring the fun back to Frankfurt. Oddly enough, he has succeeded so far with an away victory over Bremen, a should-have-been-a-victory-if-not-for-the-ref against Dortmund and 90 minutes which more often than not look like football again. The team will most probably still end up somewhere in the greyish depths of midtable mediocrity but the fans will still think that it hadn’t been more fun finishing 13th in quite a while.

SAME: Incomplete lists.
So feel free to add your own observations via the comments.

There is much to like about the DFB-Pokal.

First of all, its’ format contrasts nicely with all other season long competitions. A pure knockout tournament. 90 minutes minimum. 120 minutes and penalty shootouts if necessary. No draws. No rematches. No second legs. If you are the away team, live with it. If you have a bad day, it’s goodbye.

Then there is what the English like to call the “romance of the cup” and what less romantic Germans file under the saying “the cup has its’ own rules”. What these rules are? No German really knows. What these rules do? Help underdogs to famous upsets, so that the English can have their romance.

And finally, regular league football doesn’t give you 120th minute buzzer beaters.

Famous 45
Sometimes asking a 6th division amateur side to knock out a global player with €300m+ in yearly revenue is just a little too much. Holding Bayern Munich to a scoreless draw in the first half, only conceding three and scoring a consolation goal in the second half, was still good enough for probably the proudest chapter in SpVgg Neckarelz’s 88 year long history. And if said global player can only rack up in excess of €100m a year, and if you are a freshly promoted 4th division side, then even a 1-0 lead at half time is possible – as SG Sonnenhof Großaspach proved against Stuttgart (1-4).

Heroic 90
Going a little down the Bundesliga rankings and a little up the 4th division rankings and we end up with the first of two giant killings of the first round. Eintracht Trier, coached by all dancing, drinking and smoking former German international Mario Basler, knocked out Hannover 96 3-1. Hannover took the lead in the first half and looked modestly comfortable. In the second half Hannover then lost control of the match and Trier deservedly turned the score around. Following Hannover’s modestly successful attempts to equalize, Trier killed the game with a counter attack in the 88th minute. The only positive Hannover’s coach can take from this match is, that he still has his job.

Epic 120
Different to Jörn Andersen – former coach of FSV Mainz 05. Following his former club’s defeat to 4th division side VfB Lübeck, Andersen unsuccessfully tried to argue how his 120 minutes are better than Hannover’s 90 minutes, during 3 hours worth of crisis talks with the management. The management then said, that there had been a rift developing between him and the team and management over the past couple of weeks already and then Andersen was gone.

While not a giant killing, SC Preußen Münster’s game against Hertha (1-3) is at least worth a mention. Not because 4th division side Preußen Münster forcing Hertha to extratime and almost to penalties is such an amazing feat. Even die hard Preußen Münster fans must admit that holding or forcing Hertha to anything in the DFB-Pokal is not really that special. But given that Berlin are the antithesis to cup competitions, it’s a bit of a surprise that Hertha are in the second round.

St. Pauli’s days of mythical DFB-Pokal runs during which they claimed the scalps of illustrious clubs such as Bayern Munich and Werder Bremen are also over. Welcome to being forced to extra time by 5th division side FC Villingen – you belong to the big boys now.

Transcendental 119:57
One out of three in picking the game of the round should see me comfortably compete with the chimp hired by GolTV to plan their Bundesliga schedule. Five minutes into the match between Fortuna Düsseldorf and Hamburg SV and I feared I could be drawing a blank yet again. Fortuna’s coach Norbert Meier had promised that his team won’t just sit back and defend, but attack and punish Hamburg instead. The way Bruno Labaddia’s side sliced through the Düsseldorf defense and confirmed their excellent pre-season form in the fourth minute, this looked like a very bad idea. In the end though, it was just a matter of the football gods forgetting to press the button labelled “own rules”. They hastily made up for it, presumably frantically pressing the button three or four times, resulting in a first half performance by Fortuna Düsseldorf, that would be every Werder Bremen fan’s wet dream. All of a sudden Fortuna started to send one smart through ball after the other through a disastrous Hamburg defense, while giving a lesson on how to quickly switch from defense to offense and back again. A little exaggeration on my side maybe – yet, at half time Düsseldorf should have been 4-1 up without exaggerating anything, but could still take an encouraging 2-1 lead into the break. Hamburg eventually gained a better hold on to the match and reduced Düsseldorf’s attacking threat, but had rather little to offer going forward, except for a long range shot by Trochowski, which came out of the blue, but leveled the score nonetheless and sent the game into extra time. It was up to Trochowski again, to change the course of the game. A penalty early in the first half of extra time put Hamburg into the lead once more and the game on its’ way to the climax. Fortuna’s attacks became more desperate. Hamburg’s counter attacks came ever closer until the clock stood at 119m:57s.

Unless you are very disciplined, you probably took a peak at the video already, and if not: you may now.

That was the last bit of good fortuna for Fortuna though and they had to settle for an English styled glorious and romantic defeat, rather than a clinical and efficient German penalty job well done. Most Fortuna fans won’t remember anyway, as they probably lost their consciousness after 119m:58s.

From our Team Blogs

St. Pauli Offside – FC St. Pauli takes extra time to advance in the cup
Dortmund Offside – Deutscher Fußball-bund Pokal: SpVgg Weiden
Hertha Offside – Things That Hertha Berlin Are Not
Bayern Offside – Pokal Preview
Leverkusen Offside – Derdiyok saves face for the squad

Mainz 05 1-0 Schalke 04
Is there anyone still keeping track of the number of setbacks Schalke has to endure this season? They are out of the Champions League, out of the UEFA Cup, underperforming in the league and now they are out of the DFB-Pokal as well. Thanks to the curious nature of the Bundesliga this season, they still have one last lifeline, or better, there is still one more setback waiting for Schalke. The game emphasized what Schalke 04 is all about in 08/09. It looks like they can control a match, but beyond that can’t do much more, which leads to Schalke losing control of a match by conceding late goals. The team lacks creativity and two to three strikers worthy of their position.

For Mainz though it’s the first ever DFB-Pokal semi-final. The way they played, none of the other teams has to be particularly scared yet.

Hamburg 2-1 Wehen-Wiesbaden
Hamburg had similar problems as Schalke and conceded a late goal by the 2. Bundesliga bottom dwellers. Different to Schalke though, Hamburg had taken care of the match and progress to the second round in the 85 minutes prior to Wiesbaden’s consolation.

Wolfsburg 2-5 Bremen
7 Goals, 7 yellow cards, 5 substitutions, 4 different goalscorers, 3 braces, 2 teams, 1 winner, 0 defense.

Leverkusen 4-2 Bayern Munich
Bayer Leverkusen both overcame their Bayern Munich jinx and cleansed their temporary home from any suspected bad karma. Now that they played so well again, another nosedive in the league can be expected pretty soon.

Bayern Munich have some problems which are overarching their whole season. These problems didn’t stop them from going on an undefeated Bundesliga, CL and DFB-Pokal run from October to January. These problems were the first to come under scrutiny though, when the results all of a sudden no longer went their way. Now the players and the coach are fiddling with a more defensive approach and other little details, to overcome what is more than anything a mental problem now.

The Semi-Final
The draw for the semi-final will take place on Saturday. Until then you can fantasize about your ideal match-ups. I would fancy a northern derby in the final, so Hamburg and Bremen should take on Mainz and Leverkusen respectively. Given that Hamburg had two second division sides in a row, it’s time for them to prove that they belong into the final. Werder Bremen had to deal with five consecutive away games in the cup against some tough opponents, so they deserve an easy home game against Mainz for a change.

DFB-Pokal Round of 16

SC Freiburg – FSV Mainz 05
VfB Stuttgart – Bayern Munich
Bayer Leverkusen – Energie Cottbus
Hamburger SV – 1860 Munich
Karlsruher SC – SV Wehen Wiesbaden
VfL Wolfsburg – Hansa Rostock
Carl Zeiss Jena - FC Schalke 04
Borussia Dortmund – Werder Bremen

Matches will be played on January 27th/28th 2009. We can look forward to a promising looking rematch of last year’s round of 16 clash between Dortmund and Bremen, while Stuttgart vs Bayern is obviously the one to watch in this round. Carl Zeiss Jena are the lone remaining third division (and lower) side and will take on Schalke.

UEFA Cup Group Stage

Group A: Schalke 04 (GER), Paris Saint Germain (FRA), Mancherster City (ABU DHABI), Racing Santander (ESP), FC Twente (NED)

23.10.08 Schalke – Paris Saint Germain
06.11.08 Racing Santander – Schalke
27.11.08 Schalke 04 – Manchester City
03.12.08 FC Twente – Schalke
17.12.08 -

An attractive and tough group for Schalke. Fred Rutten gets to play his former club FC Twente featuring Steve van Klaren. The home game against Man City looks promising.

Group B: SL Benfica (POR), Olympiacos (GRE), Galatasaray (TUR), Hertha Berlin (GER), Metalist Kharkiv (UKR)

23.10.08 Hertha – Benfica
06.11.08 Metalist – Hertha
27.11.08 -
03.12.08 Hertha – Galatasaray
17.12.08 Olympiacos – Hertha

Hertha’s manager Dieter Hoeness will probably have some € signs in his eyes at the moment. Hertha got an attractive group with home games against Benfica and Galatasaray. Lucien Favre might be worried that the game against Galatasaray could turn into a hostile away match, with a large Turkish community living in Berlin probably ready to send a delegation over to the Olympiastadion. The away matches look tricky as well.

Group C: Sevilla FC (ESP), VfB Stuttgart (GER), UC Sampdoria (ITA), FK Partizan (SRB), Standard de Liège (BEL)

23.10.08 Sevilla – Stuttgart
06.11.08 Stuttgart – Partizan
27.11.08 Sampdoria – Stuttgart
03.12.08 -
17.12.08 Stuttgart – Standard de Liege

A though group for Stuttgart and to make matters worse, they aren’t even getting any of the revenue guaranteeing home games against Sevilla and/or Sampdoria. Stuttgart will probably just hope to get out of the group.

Group E: AC Milan (ITA), SC Heerenveen (NED), SC Braga (POR), Portsmouth FC (ENG), VfL Wolfsburg (GER)

23.10.08 -
06.11.08 Wolfsburg – Heerenveen
27.11.08 Braga – Wolfsburg
03.12.08 Wolfsburg – Portsmouth
17.12.08 AC Milan – Wolfsburg

Wolfsburg play against AC Milan – just not at home, which is probably a bit of a disappointment for Wolfsburg’s fans.

Group F: Hamburg (GER), Ajax Amsterdam (NED), Slavia Praha (CZE), Aston Villa (ENG), MŠK Žilina (SVK)

23.10.08: MŠK Žilina – Hamburg
06.11.08: -
27.11.08: Hamburg – Ajax Amsterdam
04.12.08: Slavia Praha – HSV
17.12.08: Hamburg – Aston Villa

Hamburg fans can look forward to attractive home games against Ajax and Aston Villa, while planning a short holiday in the beautiful city of Prague. David Jarolim can look forward to a small family reunion, as Slavia is managed by his father and a cousin of him is in the squad.

M
Marcelo Bordon (Schalke 04)

C
Franck Ribery (Bayern Munich)

A
Jürgen Klopp (FSV Mainz 05)