Bundesliga Matchday 7: Ze Roberto to F4. Checkmate.

By: Jan | September 28th, 2009

Joris, Frank and Jerome Hamburg remain in control of the top, Hertha remain in control of the bottom and with his wins over Bochum, Dortmund and the Schalke fans Felix Magath is now in total control of the Ruhr Valley.

Battle Chess. When a commenter on one of Germany’s public broadcasters attempted to summarize and categorize the match between Hamburg and Bayern, he kept talking about this game being for tactic freaks, but with an uncertainty to his statements, as though he didn’t really know what was going on and didn’t want to admit to it. But then again, who does? As such, the first thirty minutes of the match, where Bayern were in control but little else, were mostly used to get to grips with who was playing where, why and how you put that in numbers. At some point a panel of experts agreed on a 3-3-3-1 for Bayern countered by a 4-4-2 diamond by Hamburg, except that Elia was really tripling up the left wing with Aogo and Boateng to put pressure on Breno, while Lahm casually checked by his old friends in Bayern’s back line to take Elia out of the game. All of that produced a high quality 0-0 at half-time and it all no longer mattered when Demel’s injury forced Labaddia to make a slew of positional changes, which accidentally put Louis van Gaal checkmate at the same time – despite van Gaal’s courageous efforts to counter Labbadia by reverting to a 4-3-3. Either that or it was all about a bit of individual brilliance by Ze Roberto and the lack of the same on the other end, that produced the solitary winning goal. So, whether the Bundesliga now has its’ very own Kasparov vs Karpov remains to be seen. Both coaches have a tendency to lose their teams, while they are thinking through their next 37 moves.

In-Jokes. While following the chess game and waiting for Louis to make his next move, I wondered whether coaches have their own way of joking around with each other. I often notice how two coaches have a quick chat after a game or prior to the post match press conference, which usually ends in laughter. In case of Bruno and Louis it would have been like

Bruno: “Got it?”
Louis: “Trochowski?”
Bruno grins, Louis laughs and the press conference begins.

After all Trochowski’s sole role in this game was to fool Bayern and himself into believing Hamburg might actually try anything via the right side. Obviously Labbadia would never admit to that, as it would make Trochowski very angry and tempt him to unleash one of his fiery long range shots at Labbadia, which will go about 10 meters wide.

That’s Clear. As Lucien Favre used to say when he used to be Hertha’s coach. Now he has been fired. Six Bundesliga defeats in a row broke his back on the outside. The team working against him broke him on the inside. The Hertha Offside picks it up from here.

Next in the Line. Borussia Mönchengladbach traded their excellent start to the season and the Juan Arango hype for four defeats in a row and a tough fixture calendar. Anyone who always knew and always doubted the signing of Michael Frontzeck as Gladbach coach may now get an account on a random Borussia Mönchengladbach board or blog and start posting.

Arne Friedrich. When typing Arne Friedrich into the Google searchbox, the service’s automatic search term completion suggests I might primarily be interested in the topics girlfriend, gay or Nutella. I really meant to type dressing room cancer though, but that doesn’t yield any satisfactory results – yet. Still, somehow Friedrich always seems to pop up whenever there’s a rift in a team I have sympathies for. A while back Little Miss Sunshine used Ballack’s shake up with Löw in the German national team, to tell the press how intolerably rude he feels the captain is. Just that he didn’t realize that players aren’t the weakest link and that Ballack is a much better football player than him. In case of Lucien Favre he didn’t realize either that this man knows much more about football than him, but he remembered that bit about who the weakest link is. Now the only question the HSV sympathizer in me has left, is how he managed to get rid of Dietmar Beiersdorfer as well.

Bavarian Beauty. A very average game between two quite evenly matched teams ended 0-0 for Cologne after 80 minutes and 1-0 for Leverkusen after 90 minutes. Leverkusen’s coach Jupp Heynckes felt like he was in Munich all over again: “This is how Bayern won the titles in its’ history: through confidence and believe in its’ own strength”. Whether this will be enough for Bayer against teams with a more mature and fine tuned game (Hamburg, Bayern, Hoffenheim) remains to be seen. The fans will certainly welcome a change to the club’s die in beauty approach of the past.

Dreary Derby. Schalke beat Dortmund 1-0 and I personally was a bit disappointed by the balance between real controversy (none) vs. made up controversy (some) in Germany’s biggest derby.

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