10 Things we learned from Matchday 18

By: Jan | February 4th, 2008

Rafael van der Vaart 1. If Bayern play bad their rivals will play worse.
Or at least drop points, while Bayern won’t. Let’s take Hamburg for this weekend’s example. They played a toothless first half, went down 0-1 and then needed an improved second half to draw the match against Hanover. Bayern played a good first half, went up 2-0 and then lost the plot in the second half, but got away with a 2-1 victory over Rostock.
= moving clear an extra two points.

2. There is one thing in this world you can rely on.
And that’s controversial refereeing decisions or straight out bad calls. This weekend has seen plenty, with close penalty calls and debatable offside decisions coupled with a bad day at the office. Bottom dwellers Energie Cottbus will be especially cursing their luck, as two goals were denied for offside, while Bayer Leverkusen on the other side was given a late penalty to clinch all three points (3-2). TV replays would back either the referee or Energie Cottbus, depending on which TV station you tuned in, thus: in dubio pro referee. That Bochum’s equaliser against Bremen came from a blatantly obvious offside position, was so blatantly obvious, that the referee didn’t even try to talk his way out of the situation, and instead apologised to Bremen for his temporary blackout.

3. Onos can be blamed for many things.
The Yoko type for the Beatles breaking up. The Shinji type for Bremen losing three important points in the title race, as he assisted both goals, which eventually downed Bremen 2-1. Shinji Ono has been plagued with injuries in the past, but if he stays fit, Bochum will have made quite a bargain (€500000) of a winter transfer.

4. A new Word: Feninism.*
Frankfurt can boast Germany’s most successful women’s football team with FFC Frankfurt; serial women’s Bundesliga champions and cup winners and home to serial women’s World Footballer of the Year and World Cup winner Birgit Prinz. Things aren’t looking as rosy on the men’s side though. Eintracht Frankfurt had slid down in the Bundesliga pecking order, came close to bankruptcy and jojo’ed between the first and second Bundesliga in the past. Solid management by Heribert Bruchhagen and solid coaching by Friedhelm Funkel have turned things around though. The club is debt free and surprised everyone in the winter, when they revealed they had €10m lying around on their bank account. Money they didn’t even had to touch to buy Juventus target Martin Fenin, as he was basically refinanced with the sales of Albert Streit and Naohiro Takahara. And Fenin had quite the debut, to put it mildly, scoring a hatrick against Berlin. Even more impressive was the way he linked up with Frankfurts’s captain Amanatidis, who set up all of his goals. Something to look forward to: Frankfurt also invested around €4m to buy a Brazilian playmaker called Caio, who has yet to make his debut…
* invented by Holz over at the Guardian sportblog.

5. Sebastian Kehl don’t need no feet.
I’ll copy this one straight from chris over at our main page.
I don’t know which impresses me more: that Kehl scored with his back or that after he scored he ran away nonchalantly as if to say, “yeah, that was totally planned”. I’ll go with the latter. Dortmund needed the whole of Kehl’s anatomy too, as they picked up a draw in a 6 goal thriller with Duisburg.
To add a personal note, here is a new video of his goal with a behind goal camera perspective and a cheerful Sebastian Kehl afterwards.

6. Kevin Kuranyi uses his head.
Kevin Kuranyi came back from his pneumonia and headed home the first goal for Schalke against Stuttgart, from a perfectly timed trademark precision Ivan Rakitic free kick. Not necessarily something we would need to learn by now. There aren’t many, if any, strikers in Germany, who can match Kuranyi’s aerial effectiveness. But I need to tell you this to set up a proper context for the 7th thing we learned.

7. Kevin Kuranyi doesn’t use his head.
He didn’t need to for Schalke’s second goal, which he poached over the goal line, following a blunder by Raphael Schäfer. Though, he should have used his head afterwards, as he, overwhelmed with bliss, pulled of his shirt and got his fifth yellow card, which means he won’t feature in next week’s all important Revierderby against Borussia Dortmund. The game against Stuttgart ended 4-1 BTW.

8. Only 1% of Berlin cares about Hertha
That’s discounting the metropolitan area and the fact that there probably were a few Eintracht Frankfurt fans in the Olympiastadion. But 35000 for a Bundesliga match in a 74000 seater stadium is, well, quite embarrassing considering Frankfurt average almost 50000, which would be 10% of Frankfurt. Not to speak of 1899 Hoffenheim in the second Bundesliga. A village with 3272 inhabitants and their team averages over 6000 per game.

9. Joshua Kennedy takes pride in the words „Ich bin ein Karlsruher.“
No longer wanted, or deemed not good enough, at Nuremburg, Kennedy moved to Karlsruhe during the winter break. Incidentally the two clubs played each other this weekend and incidentally Kennedy assisted the first goal and scored the second one himself in KSC’s 2-0 victory. Karlsruhe lie in sixth position, two points short of a Champions League spot, and are close to achieve their goal of staying in the Bundesliga.

10. The DFB-Pokal Quarter Final Fixtures.
VfL Wolfsburg – Hamburg
Borussia Dortmund – 1899 Hoffenheim
VfB Stuttgart – Carl Zeiss Jena
Bayern Munich – 1860 Munich