I was fully engaged in my typical football fan mindset.

Three days later my mind was someplace else – or the same place turned numb and sad. Teresa Enke had given a remarkable press conference. Under tears, she openly talked about her husband’s struggle with depression for the past six years, his anxieties and self-perceived failure. In another press conference Oliver Bierhoff announced that the friendly between Germany and Chile had been cancelled. I always thought of Bierhoff as that squeaky clean superficial marketing guy, who had turned Germany’s Euro campaign into a mountain tour and is sure to turn South Africa into a safari, trying to manufacture emotions around a common theme for sponsors to exploit. When he broke out in tears it was real.

I kept thinking about a former classmate of mine. Philipp moved to our high school for the last three years leading up to graduation. He had been at our school once before in fifth and sixth grade. He hung around with a group of friends then, who all eventually moved schools, cities or countries. When he came back he became a loner. We all had settled down in our cliques – not actively seeking new members. He was a nice and friendly guy – calm and quiet. When he talked, you sometimes had to fear he might stumble over his own words. He was an average student, neither excelling or failing in a particular subject. He did a lot of endurance sports. When we organized the renovation of the recreation room for the pupils, he was one of only two who volunteered to help out. He would pop up at parties here and then. We moved along with him in the background. He wasn’t bullied or made fun of. We greeted him with a friendly smile in the morning or said goodbye by noon, asked him for a pen or about homework and we ignored him. It wasn’t until our prom, that we learned what a great piano player he was. He received standing ovations and then we said goodbye and went our separate ways. Our high school organizes annual reunions around Christmas with the usual suspects showing up each year. Philipp only stopped by once. He sat a bit outside of the pile. I spotted him talking to another classmate of mine and walked over to him. The first thing I noticed was the pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket and was surprised that he had started smoking. He talked about his social anxiety and the therapy he just completed. His openness and honesty with which he talked about his “flaws” and “weaknesses” was striking. It contrasted heavily with the setting. With people presenting a selective image of themselves – one which is about achievements and plans to achieve something and not about failure. I wondered whether I should ask him, if he’d like to hang out for a drink or go to the cinema sometime. I thought it might be tacky or apologetic. I thought he might not be interested anyway. I feared awkwardness. I wondered what my friends might think. I wasn’t really keen on the extra effort. I kept my thoughts and invitation to myself. Six months later I received message that Philipp had committed suicide. I was shocked and devastated. I kept going over the last time I met him again and again. I talked a lot with my friends from school, with each of us trying to contribute little bits of information. His mother and sister both had cancer, but they were recovering. I learned about depression as an illness and not something used to describe the eccentricities of a rock or movie star. We couldn’t come up with any answers, and the picture was only marginally clearer. All the talking helped a lot though.

I aimlessly surfed around the net. Articles kept repackaging and publishing the same few pieces of a very incomplete puzzle over and over again. I read about the death of Robert Enke’s two year old daughter Lara, his adopted daughter Leila, his time at Benfica, his struggles at Barcelona, his return to form at Hannover, his sanctuary for dogs and his friendly and humble character. Only a few stood out. I knew most of these things already. The best parts were usually written in the comment sections under the actual articles with people coming together to express heartfelt condolences, talk about their own struggles with depression or how they lost a friend or loved one under similarly tragic circumstances. The odd sick tasteless remark and joke made sure, I wouldn’t forget I was still on the Internet.

Yesterday, one week after leading his team mates onto the pitch as a captain in front of a boisterous sell out crowd, Robert Enke returned to Hannover’s stadium one last time. The place was packed again as people gathered to mourn and say their goodbyes. Robert Enke was later buried in a private ceremony next to his daughter Lara. His burial was a final farewell and a signal that slowly but surely life will go on. The match between Germany and Ivory Coast will take place on Wednesday. Hannover travel to Schalke on Saturday. There is the distinct wish and need though, that life won’t just return to its’ former rules and rituals. A lot has been written to raise awareness of depression, to remove its’ stigma and to pledge for a better way of treating each other. Theo Zwanziger, the chief of Germany’s FA, announced that they want to get involved to help the cause. A lot less if anything will be written, said and done about it in two weeks time. After Philipp had died, we also eventually returned to our lifes. We had a new experience burned into our minds. But, nothing had changed except for those closest to him. The big question, with a potentially sad or encouraging answer, is, whether one year from now it will be any different for Robert Enke?
 

“German international goalkeeper Robert Enke has been killed after being hit by a train at a level crossing, police said on Tuesday. Police said that the death could be a suicide.” – AFP

Words fail me.

Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars. VfB Stuttgart will host Sevilla in the Champions League on Tuesday and then head off to Hannover for, what is now, a relegation six-pointer. Even if you take the admittedly slight over dramatization out of the equation, Stuttgart still end up facing the worst start to a season in 35 years. This weekend it was Schalke’s task to heap more misery on Markus Babbel, and they duly delivered with a somewhat fortunate 2-1 victory. Look for the upside in the downturn, and you’ll find a much more spirited and courageous display by the Stuttgart players. Sporting director Horst Heldt had spent some time in front of TV cameras reminding the players of their duties and trying to take pressure away from his coach. The latter didn’t quite work out. The team lacks organization, tactical finesse and is overly reliant on players individually running the show up front or at the back. A blunder by Stefano Celozzi gifted Schalke the first goal and a lack of creativity by the likes of Hleb, made it difficult to break down Schalke’s defense. At least Stuttgart have yet another shooting star to look forward to with Julian Schieber, who mildly compensates for transfers which currently and again struggle to deliver.

Cost Control. It ain’t pretty but Schalke are grinding their way to the top. Once having arrived there though, the club faces a fire sale to balance the books again, following years of overly optimistic economic planning ahead. The following season will invariably result in suckage in Europe and something comparable in the league. No wait, that was another club.

The Sick Bay. Another week, another long term injury for a Hamburg player. This time around Romeo Castelen’s troubled knee signaled it may be in trouble once again. The speedy winger is facing a potentially month long injury setback. This is a particularly tragic one, as Romeo Castelen just returned to professional football following a break of almost two years. Hamburg fans now have to look forward in terror to the games against Celtic and Schalke, fearing to lose ever more players.

Louis van Gaal’s Football Philosophy. With one quarter of the season in the books, I think we now have a much clearer picture of the kind of football Louis van Gaal wants to play with Bayern: pass the ball to Müller, who then either scores himself or sets up Freiburg’s Cha Du-Ri for the easy tap-in own-goal.

For a more accurate assessment you might still want to check out the Bayern Offside.

Subs are not Ball Boys. Hannover’s Mario Eggimann had to learn this the hard way after being yellow carded for passing the ball to his goalkeeper while warming up on the sidelines in his team’s 2-1 defeat to Frankfurt.

Desperate, Desolate and Doomed. Hertha.

Spin Doctor. Leverkusen’s coach Jupp Heynckes is an elder statesman type coach, who transcended the idiocy and irrationality of the day to day football business years ago. As such I’ll let him get away with first proclaiming, that we might indeed see a goal fest when his side and Bruno Labbadia’s Hamburg meet given that both stand for attacking football. Just to suggest that he knew it all along, that the game would actually turn out to be a total snoozefest. At this point the resident blogger of the Bundesliga Offside wants to inform you, that I’m also not the least bit surprised about all the things that happened this weekend. I was just too lazy to blog my predictions beforehand.

Minus 7 Goals Later. When Bremen and Hoffenheim met at the Weserstadion last season, the game eventually mutated into an open ended 5-4 goal fest in Bremen’s favor. This time the game mutated into a controlled and confident 2-0 victory in Bremen’s favor. The neutral observer is getting nostalgic. The Werder Bremen fan is looking at a team which is slowly but surely moving itself into a position, where it’s only a matter of time until someone proclaims them as serious title candidates.

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

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

Please send your fake takeover applications to admin@nufc.co.uk and the real ones to daryl[at]theoffside[dot]com.

Update: Just as I write this post the Borussia Dortmund Offside goes up for auction as well. If you are more the romantic type who can do without the successful and without the wealthy then this is a blog for you.

Update 2: I should have taken a little look around before writing this as there are even more team blogs available: Leverkusen Offside, Muklenblacklen Offside and Eintracht Frankfurt Offside. Blog for two of them and we’ll give you the third one for free.

Update 3: I think I see the pattern emerging, so it’s easier to just say that the Hamburg Offside, Cologne Offside, Bayern Offside, Bochum Offside, St. Pauli Offside and Hertha Offside are the only team blogs currently not looking for a new blogger.

For everyone else it’s season 46 episode 34 of the Bundesliga. We’ve already been served 2970 minutes high on excitement and low on answers – the latter will have to be packed into the upcoming 90 minutes. Who’s going to win the title, who will qualify for the Champions and Europa League, who is going down, what is the smoke monster and what lies behind Felix Magath’s wry smile? The league’s script writers have promised us answers to at least half of these questions.

Hannover 0-5 Wolfsburg. Except for the sell out crowd there was nothing really derby-ish about this game (and then, the last match at home usually tends to be a sell out anyway). Hannover fielded a reshuffled team, with 39 year old defender Michael Tarnat given his farewell match, and was consequently ripped apart by the best strike duo of this Bundesliga season. Wolfsburg now only need a draw in their game against Bremen to secure their first Bundesliga title. Can you expect Bremen to put up a fight and possibly repeat their 5-2 DFB-Pokal victory over the wolves despite being in between two cup finals? Well, they were easily beaten 3-1 by Karlsruhe this weekend – make up your own mind… but stranger things have happened.

Hoffenheim 2-2 Bayern. Hoffenheim have overall more quality than Hannover and they were ready to give Bayern a run for their money – e.g. they didn’t give Boubacar Sanogo a farewell match. In fact Hoffenheim wanted to win this game and take revenge for last year’s cruel defeat. They had to settle for a draw though, which will still feel like a defeat for Bayern, who in theory could end up winning the title next Saturday, or drop down to fourth and play in the second tier European competition for the second time in three seasons…

Stuttgart 2-0 Cottbus. And here is the team that will decide Bayern’s fate and who themselves could still win the title or drop all the way down to fourth. A solid performance was enough to overcome Cottbus. Mario Gomez was rested and only had a short twenty minutes cameo, which was enough time for him to set up the second goal.

Hertha 0-0 Schalke. Marko Pantelic scored a perfectly valid goal which was ruled out by the referee and since close games are Hertha’s trademark this season, the game ended 0-0 / the capital’s title hopes. Hertha fans could chose to read a lot into this match, and how this is typical Hertha style choking and apart from being wrong, they would also miss out on the silver lining. A win against Karlsruhe will guarantee Hertha a third place finish, with chances to go second, should Bayern and Stuttgart draw their match. A 63 point haul to date is their best ever Bundesliga result already.

Lucien Favre has some work to do to refocus and motivate his team though. The reaction to the Schalke game was a textbook case of the volatile professional football mercenary team spirit, with Voronin criticizing Favre, Simunic criticizing his team mates and Hoeness unsurprisingly criticizing anyone but himself.

Hamburg 0-1 Cologne. Just a few weeks ago Hamburg could still win the triple. Martin Jol was coach of the year candidate and courted by Bayern. Didi Bayersdorfer was a transfer magician with profit margins unheard of by even the most reckless bankers and Piotr Trochowski kept saying how he is ready for a really big club after every other half decent match he played. 28 days and Werder Bremen later, Hamburg’s season has completely collapsed with a super-poor home performance against Cologne being the icing on the cake. The DFB-Pokal and UEFA Cup were bonus trophies, but qualification for European football was the club’s official goal for this season, which now is in very serious doubt. Apart from the need to somehow raise their own game again and beat Frankfurt, they also need Dortmund to slip up against Mönchengladbach.

Dortmund 6-0 Bielefeld. And can you see this Dortmund team drop points against Mönchengladbach? Well, you could make an argument that Gladbach are a better side than Bielefeld…

Leverkusen 5-0 Mönchengladbach. Marginally better side really. It’s amazing and embarrassing that a 5-0 defeat still helped Mönchengladbach win a one goal advantage over Bielefeld. Bielefeld now have to win their game against Hannover and overcome a five goal deficit (four goals actually, but Gladbach scored more goals overall and thus would still be ranked ahead of Bielefeld) and hope Dortmund beats Gladbach. Based on Dortmund’s form, they’ll probably just have to make sure to beat Hannover and let Dortmund do all the goal scoring…

There’s a mini chance for some title decisive drama and a big chance for drama regarding relegation, Europa League and Champions League and I hope to get a liveblog ready to cover it all.

vs Bundesliga Report 2007/2008: The above numbers add up to a combined revenue of €1527,6m, while the official revenue reported by the Bundesliga is €1566,931m. This might have to do with Bayern Munich. Bayern Munich were co-owners of the Allianz Arena but recently bought the shares held by 1860 Munich. In turn Bayern released two revenue figures: the one quoted above and one + Allianz Arena which is roundabout €40m higher. In that case the revenues of the 17 other clubs are more or less correct. The Bundesliga also reported that 15 of 18 clubs turned a profit as compared to 18 of 18 in the previous season. So three clubs from the above list must have had a negative result.

vs Deloitte Football Money League Deloitte further “correct” their numbers by excluding none football related income as well as one offs like transfer fees.

Warning: Revenue figures of football clubs are like possession stats after a football match. A team dominating possession doesn’t necessarily win the game and isn’t necessarily the better team. After all, Manchester City were ranked 20th in Deloitte’s money league but are the richest club in the world…

The 2. Bundesliga revenues of the three clubs promoted to the Bundesliga: Borussia Mönchengladbach (Turnover €68,7m, Profit €6,8m), FC Cologne (€42,6m, Loss €2,27m), TSG Hoffenheim (Turnover €24m, Loss €5,2m)

Bonus
Turnover 1. Bundesliga 2007/2008: €1566,931m (€1456,783m in 2006/2007, +7,3%)
Turnover 2. Bundesliga 2007/2008: €367,508m (€291,032m in 2006/2007, +23,3%)
Turnover Bundesliga 2007/2008: €1934,439m (€1747,815m in 2006/2007, +10,7%)

Combined debt: €469,453m (€510,323m in 2006/2007)
Wages to Turnover Ratio: 40%