10 Things we learned from Matchday 21

By: Jan | February 26th, 2008

1. Sotirios Kyrgiakos is the Bundesliga’s Marco Matterazzi.
It wasn’t a World Cup final, it has yet to prove to be title deciding, but it at least shares some similarities with the infamous incident. Diego is - statistically approved - the most fouled player in the Bundesliga. A little fact that coincides with him being the best player in the Bundesliga as well - by popular vote. He has also been the most fouled player on the pitch in Frankfurt this Saturday. He was also greeted with constant booing from the Frankfurt fans, which Bremen’s players blamed on Mark van Bommel, who accused Diego of being a diver after the Bayern match. It took a full 40 minutes for Diego to lose his nerves. A foul by Frankfurt defender Sotirios Kyrgiakos wasn’t called, Kyrgiakos said something to Diego who subsequently body-checked the Greek colossus to the ground. Quite a feat for the lilliputilian (c) chris. It was a deserved red card though, for which Diego will have to sit out a three match ban. Ten Bremen players then lost 1-0 against eleven Frankfurt players and will curse their luck. Not because of the red card, but because they nonetheless controlled the match and had enough chances to equalise and then win this match.

2. English is the lingua franca for swear words.
Kyrgiakos won’t be able to sell any books with this incident, since Diego was very quick to reveal what was said to him. Kyrgiakos probably didn’t want to take the risk, that Eintracht Frankfurt’s German teacher teaches different swear words than Werder Bremen’s German teacher, so he decided to stick to English and ordered Diego to “Stand up” and closed with “and fuck you.”

So while Kyrgiakos will find it difficult to draw any financial advantage from the incident, it looks like he won’t have to fear any repercussions for his behaviour either. Diego meanwhile can take some comfort from a wave of support from people, who might not approve of his body-check but can understand it; e.g. Germany’s national team coach Jogi Löw.

3. Arschloch is German for asshole.
Another pair of players who won’t be best buddies anytime soon are Stuttgart’s Mario Gomez and Karlsruhe’s Maik Franz. Overall Mario Gomez got the better of Maik Franz by scoring a goal, while Stuttgart got the better of Karlsruhe by winning the derby 3-1. Maik Franz must have nonetheless put Mario Gomez through the defensive mill to an extent, that Gomez called him an Arschloch in the post match interview. Different to Kyrgiakos, this probably will have consequences for Gomez, because it was captured on camera for all of Germany (the very small part with pay TV subscriptions) to hear and see and the sports court decided to look into it. Jogi Löw showed understanding for Mario Gomez as well. He’s quite an understanding man.

4. Mark van Bommel sticks to universally understandable sign language.
It came a bit as a surprise to me, that something like this didn’t happen earlier and more often, but Mark van Bommel has finally been sent off for the first time this season. Daryl has covered this story on the main page and Jogi Löw has not yet issued a statement, that he understands Mark van Bommel.

Bastürk 5. The sports court has even more work to do.
And that’s thanks to fans for whom tradition and passion in football often equal flares, fireworks and violence. All of which is verboten in German stadiums. An extra 1000 police men had the violence aspect under control during the derby between Stuttgart and Karlsruhe, but some Karlsruhe fans managed to get some fireworks into the stadium, burn off some fires and shoot flares onto the pitch. Karlsruhe were quick to denounce those people as idiots but will get fined anyway I guess.

6. Manuel Friedrich scores an accidental wonder goal.
It was meant as a cross but if you pretend it to be intentional it’s pretty sweet. It also won Leverkusen the match against Schalke to cap of a perfect week for the chemical brothers.

7. Mirko Slomka is living on borrowed time.
A second consecutive defeat for Schalke has seriously upped the pressure on Mirko Slomka, who has now been handed the do-or-die task of beating Bayern and getting to the quarter finals of the Champions League. Otherwise “we finally need a trainer here at Schalke, who has a high international standing”, says Schalke’s president Josef Schnusenberg. “We finally need a president here at Schalke, who has a high international standing or at least a clue”, says Bundesliga Offside blogger Jan.

8. Duisburg is probably too good to go down, but will go down anyway.
Duisburg don’t play all that bad for a relegation struggler. Not half as bad as Arminia Bielefeld, whom they beat 2-0 this weekend. A result that sees them leave the last place of the table but not the relegation spots. The problem with Duisburg is just, that they lose games like the one against Stuttgart last week or draw games like the one against Dortmund three weeks ago. If you add up the points they dropped there, you’ll probably end up with the exact amount of points, which would have been necessary to save the club at the end of the season.

9. The same could be feared about Nuremberg.
They came ridiculously close to kicking Benfica Lisbon out of the UEFA Cup. But even if they didn’t manage to do it, their fighting spirit and performance would easily see them grabbing enough wins to move them out of their misery in the Bundesliga. It’s just that they don’t do that (yet). Instead they once again drew a crucial home match against a direct competitor. The good news for them is probably, that Duisburg and Cottbus have the same problems and that Bielefeld are just so incredibly bad, that they are close to sacking their good as new coach again. Before that though, they sacked the sporting director who brought in the soon to be sacked coach. The current tally is at five coaches a year, if you needed some off-the-pitch evidence for why Bielefeld has a great chance to get relegated.

10. There are no signs of midtable crisis at Hertha.
They drew against Wolfsburg in a match either side could have won and with a point both sides are happy with. Yet, should Hertha beat Duisburg at home next week, they can probably end any scenarios involving Hertha and relegation once and for all. At which point Hertha need to look at what they want to do with the rest of their season. Be happy with who and where they are? Take a gamble on Europe? Travel the world? Meet new people, learn about new cultures and accidentally forget to pick up Dieter Hoeneß at the duty-free Brazilian players shop?