Time for Frankfurt and Berlin to be on their best Behaviour
By: Jan | May 13th, 2008
The Bundesliga has won an additional UEFA Cup berth, following a draw including the seven fairest and wisest leagues in Europe. Now it’s up to the DFL to decide which team in the Bundesliga honoured the Fair Play ideal the most and thus earns the honour to compete in Europe despite the fact, that they played crap and couldn’t qualify through the league.
Since the season isn’t over yet, they’ll wait until after the season concludes on Saturday. So there is still one game to earn some valuable Fair Play points. The requirements are a bit nebulous and don’t just include the number of red and yellow cards the team receives but aspects like positive play, fan behaviour, behaviour of club officials and stuff like that. Thus it’s a bit difficult to predict which team is actually leading the race. But taking yellow and red cards as a point of reference it would be Hertha BSC Berlin closely followed by Eintracht Frankfurt. Both teams have no longer anything to play for and thus can fully concentrate on their Fair Play duties. Frankfurt host just relegated Ruhr Vally underachievers MSV Duisburg and Berlin travel to Munich.
Will be interesting to follow their games. Expect Hertha to play positive attacking football and get figured out on counter attacks, while doing nothing to stop those attacks so they don’t get any cards. Lucien Favre will hand out bouquets of flowers to Ottmar Hitzfeld, Oliver Kahn and some random people. Hertha fans will buy Munich fans a Weissbier while cheering when Luca Toni makes it 6-0. The wonderful world of the UEFA Fair Play Ranking.
Our resident Hertha blogger Abby could do without the UEFA Cup though, as she fears that the squad lacks depth to compete in Europe and the Bundesliga.
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Comments
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And the Hoeness brothers will have a convival family reunion. Maybe Dieter will bring his kid down from the Hertha reserves?
I’m still not sure how a team with Josip ‘three yellow cards’ Simunic leads anyone in a Fair Play ranking, but credit to us. I still don’t think we have the squad to compete in Europe, but perhaps with some summer signings we might (and maybe that will lure them in). I don’t want to pull a Nuremburg or Bolton. But a few European nights and a bit of cash would be nice…so I am a bit conflicted, certainly.
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Well, you just need bad refereeing. In the match against Nuremberg Simunic first handled the ball in the box which should have been a penalty and maybe a yellow card. Then Simunic brought a Nuremberg player down which should have been another penalty and maybe even a red card. But this way Hertha kept their good yellow/red card stat.
Anyway, the words UEFA Cup don’t have the same effect on a player as Champions League, but it should still be a nice extra that could help a) keeping players b) buying players - as you pointed out.
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I don’t know Abby, as I look at the teams for next year, I think there are a lot of other relegation candidates ahead of even an UEFA-Cup distracted Hertha. Cottbus will immediately be back in the cellar and need a couple amazing home wins to survive again–I think Bochum will have real problems next season as well, I am not sure Hoffenheim is ready for prime time if they make it. We already know Bielefeld is not ready for prime time, wherever they fall. The fact that Gladbach and Köln are teams that can probably spend more than the average promoted team will affect small city sides and heavily indebted sides like Hertha more acutely–so I think the cash influx now might be more important than the possible effect on league play.
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