Schalke’s Uruguayian midfielder Carlos Großmüller has an interesting family background. His grandfather served on board of the warship Graf Spee, which the crew scuttled just outside of Montevideo in 1939. Most of the crew members decided to stay in South America including Carlos grandfather. Carlos never met him I think and doesn’t speak any German though (maybe now that he’s at Schalke).

Nelson Valdez’s great grandfather’s original name before fleeing the Nazi regime for Paraguay in the 1930’s was Wolfgang Von Durr.

We are aware of the problem. Bobby and Woody are currently over at the lab looking into it. We are confident we can come up with a satisfactory explanation. When you can use an inefficient and an efficient German team to prove German efficiency, then our task is a piece of cake really.

Just only discovered that. It’s the UEFA website’s video magazine. There’s an interview with Schaaf in there. A short one actually.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/fact-or-fiction-form-in-football-954440.html

On theme of penalty shootouts…in the report, it does put two myths of penalty shootouts to the test. Lifiting it from the report – ‘Home teams in penalty shoot-outs have no advantage’. Also from the same report – ‘Goalkeepers dive too often for penalties, as opposed to standing still, which is more effective’.

Insightful for me.

And, the more I see articles like the one from Soccerlens (which I first came across it through on the main page under The Daily Dose like the day before or something) and The Bleacher Report, the more I have to remind myself the newspaper coverage doesn’t change here.

*putting on a straight face*