10 Things we learned from Matchday 23

By: Jan | March 11th, 2008

Uli and Franck 1. It have been tough 42 hours for Bremen.
You can heap quite a bit of misery on a club in a timeframe of just 42 hours. First Tim Wiese helped Glasgow Rangers to a comfortable 2-0 home win in the UEFA Cup. Then Werder was forced to announce, that they had to cancel their planned stadium expansion to 50000 seats due to rising steel costs. Shortly afterwards Stuttgart almost certainly ended Bremen’s title ambitions with a 6-3 victory, while Bayern beat Karlsruhe to extend their lead to seven points. Per Mertesacker saw a red card and will miss the next two matches. I hope I didn’t miss anything.

2. Bayern are cruising.
I’m not sure whether it’s the promise of three titles or heartfelt understanding for Hitzfeld’s rotation policy, but Bayern are free of any conflicts at the moment. No players are showing signs of discontent whether they play or not and games are comfortably won. If Bayern continue like this, they have a good chance for a treble. To the left is Uli Hoeness trying to tell Ribery in broken French, how Bayern wanted Arjen Robben and how Madrid wanted him and how Bayern ended up with him, while Madrid ended up with Robben. They had quite a laugh.

3. Bremen plus Hamburg equals perfect title contender.
It was a weekend that perfectly demonstrated why either Bremen or Hamburg most probably won’t win the Bundesliga. Bremen scored 51 goals so far - more than any other team in the league. They also conceded twice as many goals as Hamburg or three times as many goals as Bayern. They already lost three games in the league this year. Hamburg have yet to lose a Bundesliga match this year and have the second best defensive record in the league. But they have also drawn four matches already, which are far too many for a serious title challenge.

4. There are English and German hat tricks.
Quote from the Wikipedia article:

A hat-trick occurs in football (soccer) when a player scores three goals in a single game, although there are various contrasting interpretations as to the exact criteria of a valid football hat-trick. It is commonly held that the goals can be scored at any time in the match, whether in normal, injury or extra time, and for some this is the only condition necessary to satisfy the definition of a hat-trick. As with other goal-scoring statistics, goals in a penalty shootout are not counted.

There also exists the widely accepted concept of the ‘flawless’ or ‘German’ hat-trick, which differs in that all three goals must be scored consecutively within one period of play.

So, by the stricter German definition Geoff Hurst didn’t score a hat trick against Germany in the 1966 World Cup final and neither did Mario Gomez against Werder Bremen. Mario Gomez is on fire nonetheless.

5. Oliver Kahn declares the next Zidane race to be over.
“We can compare him to Zidane. Because of his technique and of the rhythm he brings during the games and all the things he does on the pitch.” - Oliver Kahn in an interview with Die Welt, following Ribery’s recent outstanding performances. Oliver Kahn is also known as an avid secret reader of the Lyon Offside for which he left a personal message: “Benzema who?”

6. There’s no job too immense when you’ve got confidence.
With an M and an A and an N and a U and an E and an L and a NEUER. Put ‘em all together and you’ve got Mirko Slomka’s job guarantee. Neuer kept a clean sheet against Bielefeld and pulled off a few good saves again, while Varela and Altintop supplied the goals to beat Bielefeld 2-0. As long as Neuer can keep his good form, Slomka has time to make the rest of the team click again.

7. Lulu’s got a temper.
Hertha’s coach Lucien Favre has been known as a rather calm, sober, sensitive, animal and tactics loving coach to the public. So the thought of Favre insulting a referee or otherwise getting in his way, must have been so ridiculous that Babak Rafati probably decided to sent off Marko Pantelic instead. Abby’s got the whole story and video over at the Hertha Offside.

8. Karlsruhe are falling apart.
Karlsruhe are the best newly promoted team in decades with a fair chance to make it to Europe next season, but their winning squad is falling apart more and more every week. It started with Tamas Hajnal, who decided to sign a lucrative contract with Borussia Dortmund, who are well below Karlsruhe in the league table at the moment. Then Andreas Görlitz decided to end his loan spell and return to Bayern Munich to at least be able to say, that he won the Champions League as a bench-warmer. Now Mario Eggimann signed a 5 year contract with Hanover 96, who are also ranked below Karlsruhe at the moment. I can’t wait to learn, which of their players will announce his new club next week.

9. GolTV minus Ray Hudson equals #*!? commentary.
Maybe this is common knowledge for GolTV subscribers, but for someone who scans the internets for his weekend dose of football poetry, this was quite a revelation after watching bits and pieces of GolTV’s coverage of the Stuttgart - Bremen match. They could have just well gone with the Bundesliga’s custom English dude who says oh my goodness one too many times.

10. The teams who will get relegated at least fully deserve it.
Statisticians got the following out of their databases: this years bottom of the table is the worst in 23 years. May it come as some sort of soothing news to them that Derby County racked up 7 points less and already played 5 games more than Cottbus. But who are we, comparing ourselves to the Premier League?