Bundesliga 2009/2010: What is New? What is the Same?

By: Jan | September 2nd, 2009

Sorry for letting this blog rot away in the late August sun for so many weeks. Other work took over and left some time but not much energy to spend on other things. But the team blogs have been bursting with energy all the more at the same time and a few more came back to life, so I guess there were still enough places on The Offside for Bundesliga related updates.

With a couple of lazy days during the international week coming up, it’s time to take a look at how season number 47 of the Bundesliga is shaping up so far.

NEW: A slow start to the season.
Last season the Bundesliga stormed out of the gates all guns blazing, racking up an average of 3.11 goals per game after the first four matchdays. The ratio eventually dropped to around 2.92 as the season progressed, but by then the league had already successfully drawn our attention to a small village in southern Germany and eventually to the stories behind all the weekly changing table toppers. This season, we are looking at a rather subdued start with just 2.69 goals per game so far and the realization that Hoffenheim have turned into just another Bundesliga side. But who knows what kind of compelling narratives this season can come up with as we move along. I sure hope it’s better than just telling the story of Rib and Rob(TM) and how they guided Bayern to an undisputed Bundesliga title, made all the more drab by a coach, who already had two humor bypass operations.

SAME: Hamburg’s early season form.
Last season Martin Jol’s Hamburg delivered 10 points and 11 goals in 4 matches, the top of the table and the promise of exciting and successful football. This season Bruno Labbadia’s Hamburg delivered 10 points and 12 goals in 4 matches, the top of the table and the promise of exciting and successful football. Martin Jol couldn’t quite deliver on that promise. As it turned out Hamburg had already scored 1/4 of their Bundesliga goals for the season, leaving not much room for the remaining fixtures and what little room was left was filled with way too many longballs. But Martin Jol had to do without the likes of Eljero Elia and Ze Roberto, so maybe there’s hope for a more successful campaign under Labbadia.

NEW: Hamburg’s early first half form.
Martin Jol’s Hamburg made a name for themselves as the undisputed comeback kids of the league, after his team came back from being 2-0 down in three of their four matches. This season it’s up to Hamburg to challenge the other club’s comebackability, as they usually only need three minutes for their first goal and between the 15th and 20th minute the opposition is already on a one-way street to defeat. A much more charitable attitude in the second half, means that Hamburg are not yet undisputed title candidates though.

SAME: Bayern’s “worst in…” season starts.
With just two points from three matches and an embarrassing defeat at the “Stadium at the Riven Path” in Mainz, Louis van Gaal had even one-upped Jürgen Klinsmann’s habit of producing worst ever/since results for the Bavarian giants. It was the worst start to a season since 1966 to be precise and without it, we may have never seen Arjen Robben in the Bundesliga so kudos to van Gaal.

NEW: Al Pacino pep talks.
How do you make an unfancied team like newly promoted Mainz beat Bayern Munich for the first time in most people’s memories (and those who claim to remember a Mainz victory probably also only think they do remember one, while it really never happened)? By letting Al Pacino do all the pre-game talking for you, as Mainz’s coach Thomas Tuchel did and then he just had to sit back and watch his team play the Bavarians off the park for 45 minutes.

Tuchel said, that he had some more ideas on how to motivate his team and that it doesn’t necessarily need to be a movie all the time. Whatever it was he did prior to his team’s next match against Mönchengladbach though, it didn’t work out at all and Mainz lost by two goals and two goalkeepers.

NEW: Wolfsburg’s first halves.
Wolfsburg were second best in the first 45 minutes of their matches against Stuttgart, Cologne, Hamburg and Bayern. Their firepower was enough to steal all three points from Stuttgart and Cologne, stage a brief comeback against Hamburg and threaten to equalize against Bayern in the second 45 minutes. Armin Veh argued that being defending champions means, his team could no longer counter attack as often and freely as last season. He also seems to want his team to find out for themselves, what to do instead and it usually takes one or two goals by the other team until they get a vague idea.

NEW: A large gaping hole at Bremen’s back.
Werder Bremen are currently giving the Weserstadion a little make-over and are using the opportunity to straighten the curves and remove the last remnants of the running track, leaving one end of the stadium wide open. Meanwhile, that large gaping hole in Bremen’s defense stayed the same, as exactly €0 were invested in defensive reinforcements in the summer. That’s my Werder.

SAME: Cologne’s lifeless and bloodless team.
Last year this fact was brushed over by an angry man filled with adrenaline running up and down the sidelines trying to transfer some of his surplus energy onto the team. This man is now in Turkey and was replaced by the quiet Zvonimir Soldo and his mute assistant Michael Henke. And if anything, they’ve at least helped to identify the problem.

SAME: Refereeing discussions.
Lively arguments about goal-line technology, video reviews, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th officials and whether someone’s grandma could have spotted that offside position make 2009/2010 feel very much like 2008/2009.

NEW: Refereeing decisions.
There have already been four matches without any cards whatsoever compared to a total of six matches last season. Could be a coincidence but the referee in the Hamburg – Cologne match also looked like handing out a yellow card would be the worst thing he could do during the match (while in reality he couldn’t have done any worse than allowing Hamburg to score two irregular goals). Maybe there’s been some internal agreement to optimize the number of cards shown during the matches – whether it has any positive side-effects remains to be seen though. And there are good news for the players as well, as arguing with the referee might actually and finally bear some fruits. Schalke’s Benedikt Höwedes was successfully argued out of a red card by his team mates and Hamburg’s Frank Rost even one-upped that by convincing the ref that a goal scored against him was offside.

SAME: Hertha’s win-lose formula.
0 points = Hertha play well and lose.
1 point = Hertha play badly but at least don’t concede a goal / Hertha play well but can’t score.
3 points = Hertha play badly, don’t concede a goal and Kacar scores in the 88th minute.

NEW: Hertha’s defense.
Josip Simunic went looking for rural excitement but all he did was exposing Arne Friedrich as his waterboy, incapable of wearing the captain’s armband and stabilizing a defense at the same time.

SAME: Jens Lehmann.

NEW: Stuttgart’s heavy rotation.
Give Stuttgart coach Markus Babbel some cash and a place in the Champions League and he suddenly feels like he is in Liverpool again and needs to constantly rotate every available player, coach and green keeper in and out of the starting eleven. Just 5 points from a possible 12 mean that’s not yet working out all that well for him.

SAME: Felix Almighty.
Felix Magath may have switched clubs and reduced his financial scope, but he quickly made sure, there aren’t too many people left interfering with his decision making at Schalke – with (ex-)president Josef Schnusenberg being the latest casualty. All this hasn’t turned the club into title contenders yet as Schalke pulled off a vintage 08/09 performance that ended in a 1-0 defeat to Freiburg on Saturday.

NEW: Freiburg, Nuremberg and Mainz.
Their task is to replace Bielefeld, Cottbus and Karlsruhe and as far as the football is concerned they are a definite improvement. While they all lack Bundesliga-grade firepower up front, their overall gameplan and tactical approach is quite sophisticated. How much of that will remain intact over the course of a season-long fight against relegation remains to be seen though.

SAME: Ze Roberto.
Supposedly one year older, but you couldn’t tell.

NEW: Eintracht Frankfurt’s Swagger.
A few years ago Eintracht Frankfurt were a broke diva commuting between the first and second division, with distant memories of better Bundesliga days the only thing fans could hold on to. Along came Heribert Bruchhagen and Friedhelm Funkel with their vision of an office clerk Pygmalion transformation and they succeeded. Out went the debts, the yoyo and the dreams and in came the health insurance, cubicle and the promise of a two-week holiday in Brazil once the 30 year mortgage on the stadium has been paid back. For a few seasons Eintracht fans thought this was all well and nice and solid, but as time went by, more and more realized there could be nothing more depressing than watching a football team mirroring your boring life for you every second Saturday. Thus Friedhelm Funkel had to go and Michael Skibbe, of all coaches, was assigned the task bring the fun back to Frankfurt. Oddly enough, he has succeeded so far with an away victory over Bremen, a should-have-been-a-victory-if-not-for-the-ref against Dortmund and 90 minutes which more often than not look like football again. The team will most probably still end up somewhere in the greyish depths of midtable mediocrity but the fans will still think that it hadn’t been more fun finishing 13th in quite a while.

SAME: Incomplete lists.
So feel free to add your own observations via the comments.