Transfers: The Summer Signings in Review

By: Jan | February 1st, 2008

The winter transfer window has just been closed, the second half of the season is about to kick off in a few hours and I had all the winter break to do a post like this one. But it wasn’t until yesterday, that I came across a page on the Gazetta dello Sport website, which lists all the Bundesliga summer transfers and rates them using a five star system. Ratings which were done before any of the players kicked a ball, so they are ideal for a little reality check.

Five Stars
Just four players were awarded the elite rating: Miroslav Klose, Luca Toni, Franck Ribery and Theofanis Gekas. The Bayer Leverkusen striker was the league’s leading goalscorer last season, which earned Bochum a nice sum of cash, but five stars? He has continued to score his fair share of goals at Leverkusen, but hasn’t been particularly impressive and looked out of touch with the rest of the team.

Four Stars
This is my favourite category, as almost every single player who was awarded four stars either didn’t deserve such a high rating in the first place, or had a disappointing first half of the season.

Miserable failure: Carlos Alberto (Werder Bremen), Ewerthon (Stuttgart), AIlton (Duisburg)
Major dissapointments: Zidan (Hamburg), Radu (Wolfsburg),
Three stars in the first place: Charisteas (Nuremberg), Klimowicz (Dortmund)
Not sure: Hamit Altintop (Bayern Munich)

Three Stars and less
OK, here are the bulk of the players, so I won’t go through each one. Just a few who caught my eye, who I feel were underrated or positive surprises.

Vidal (Bayer Leverkusen, Three Stars)
That was a smart buy by Leverkusen. Vidal has shown glimpses of his talent already and scored a beautiful goal against Hanover.

Ze Roberto and Marcel Jansen (Bayern Munich, Three Stars)
Not sure what basis those three stars had in the first place. But both players have proven themselves at Bayern with Ze Roberto being on the team’s key players.

Sanogo (Bremen, Three Stars)
Re-ignited his career at Bremen like so many others.

Sestak (Bochum, Two Stars)
Another smart transfer by Bochum. A veritable replacement for Gekas and Marcel Koller will hope, he can keep a talent for more than one season for a change.

Petric (Borussia Dortmund, Two Stars)
Great transfer who will gift Dortmund a top quality strike force once Alex Frei joins him up front.

Hajnal (Karlsruhe, Two Stars)
Played an impressive first half of the season with the equally impressive Karlsruher SC.

Jones (Schalke, Two Stars)
Made it into the German national team and has been one of Schalke’s best players.

Dejagah (Wolfsburg, One Star)
One of Wolfsburg’s best and a positive surprise on the pitch. You might give his limited grasp of world politics a one star rating.