10 Things we learned from Matchday 24

By: Jan | March 18th, 2008

1. Luca Toni goes down easily.
Call him a diver or an opportunist. When Bayern were trailing 1-0 at Cottbus, Luca Toni worked the slightest contact to his maximum advantage. He lost control of his body, fell to the ground and was awarded a questionable penalty for his troubles. But it was meant to be Cottbus’ day, as Franck Ribery, who had a 100% record before, failed to convert the spot kick.

2. Bayern go down easily.
It’s safe to blame it on 5-0 victories in the UEFA Cup and 7 point leads in the Bundesliga. It was surprisingly easy for Anderlecht and Cottbus to beat reshuffled, uninspired and toothless Bayern squads, who won’t be reshuffled quite as much in the future. Hitzfeld now rather wants winning players than rested players. But those are minor troubles compared to the drama currently happening up north.

3. Werder Bremen go down so easily it’s getting ridiculous.
Handed the golden opportunity to reclaim the ground they lost last weekend, Werder Bremen continued where they left off: control the game, press for a goal and then get figured out on counter attacks. Read: Werder Bremen 0-1 Wolfsburg. It’s just too easy. Bremen now even dropped out of the Champions League places and Schalke are a mere two points away. Diego is meanwhile sure to keep the internet and papers filled with transfer speculations, followed by denials, followed by fresh transfer speculations. We could use a new blogger for the Werder Bremen Offside to keep track of this mess.

4. Hamburg seize their chance.
If only to get hold of the second place in the table, which would spare them going through the Champions League qualification. Bayern are still five points away. Hamburg beat Dortmund 1-0. Dortmund have resigned to paying lip service about the importance of their Bundesliga campaign by now anyway. Thomas Doll rested three key players ahead of tonight’s all important DFB-Pokal semi-final.

5. Hamburg still need a new coach.
Slaven Bilic was in Hamburg just to see some of his players from the Croatian national team in action. He then met with sporting director Didi Beiersdorfer just to discuss Ivica Olic’s current form. But the conversation must have diverted at some point. I guess it went like this:
Didi: Yeah, Ivi is doing great here.
Slaven: Cool.
Didi: So I was wondering… I don’t know, if… if maybe you wanted to, and… or not. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. I just wondered if maybe you were going to take a new coaching job, and… or, uh if you felt like that, maybe you’d want to come to Hamburg. Or, I mean, whatever…. if you didn’t.
- uncomfortable silence.
Didi: Did you see Guerrero’s goal? ‘Cause that was like…
Slaven: Look, I heard this rumor that this rich club from the Premier League was gonna ask me, so I’m gonna wait and see what happens there.
Didi: That sounds great. Yeah.
Slaven: OK.
Didi: So, is that like a yes or a no or…?

The next day Slaven Bilic revealed to the Croatian press that Hamburg want him. I’m not sure this means he is a serious candidate, or whether he just uses Hamburg’s interest to put pressure on the Croatian FA and those Premier League clubs, who are all keen to keep or sign him.

6. Duisburg give Schalke a glimpse of Barcelona.
To be more precise it was Blagoy Georgiev, who scored a beautiful goal against Schalke and gave Duisburg the lead. Schalke still worked their way to a 2-1 victory, since Duisburg are relegation strugglers after all. Three points keep Schalke’s extra nervous management at bay for the moment, but Schalke should start working on their football sometime soon.

7. Nuremberg suffer the fate of many relegated clubs before them.
In the first half against Leverkusen, Nuremberg played a great match and could probably even be considered the better side. Yet, Leverkusen took the lead. Nuremberg kept their composure and managed to equalise. They then pressed for a second goal, which unfortunately for them was scored by Leverkusen. They quickly added two more, one of which was actually an own goal, to make it 4-1 and matters worse. While Nuremberg have at last shown, why many consider them too good to go down, they nonetheless look more and more likely, that they might not make the cut.

8. Hertha played their 900th Bundesliga match.
Join the wild party over at the Hertha Offside.

9. Maik Franz is the Bundesliga’s new enfant terrible.
Karlsruhe’s defender was called an A-hole by Mario Gomez and accused of unsporting behaviour by Felix Magath. Now Frankfurt’s players jumped on the slowly speeding up bandwagon and accused him of being all sorts of things as well. They didn’t mention how committing revenge fouls against him is unsporting behaviour as well. Maik Franz meanwhile seems to enjoy his bad boy image and invited all the whiners to file a complaint with the DFB and see what happens. Karlsruhe lost against Frankfurt and might be heading for midtable mediocrity.

10. Markus Miller could be the next player to leave Karlsruhe.
A newspaper in Stuttgart linked him with a move to Karlsruhe’s arch rivals. A very speculative rumour, but I’ll gladly take it to make it ten and to make Karlsruhe look like they are completely falling apart.