Bundesliga 13/14

the comparison of leagues can be a bit pointless. I dont think BL is a shit league by any means but it sucks that the league title has already been decided. It's weird how some fans act like it's always been like this when 4-5 years ago, the winner of BL was much less predictable. Not sure why it's hard to recognise Bayern just at a completely different level at this moment. Will it remain like this? We'll see. I tend to side with Fergie's opinion about cycles.
 
Gladiator said:
the comparison of leagues can be a bit pointless. I dont think BL is a shit league by any means but it sucks that the league title has already been decided. It's weird how some fans act like it's always been like this when 4-5 years ago, the winner of BL was much less predictable. Not sure why it's hard to recognise Bayern just at a completely different level at this moment. Will it remain like this? We'll see. I tend to side with Fergie's opinion about cycles.
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+1
this.
 
If that Bayern side was in the EPL they'd be at least 10 ahead IMO.
 
Gladiator said:
the comparison of leagues can be a bit pointless. I dont think BL is a shit league by any means but it sucks that the league title has already been decided. It's weird how some fans act like it's always been like this when 4-5 years ago, the winner of BL was much less predictable. Not sure why it's hard to recognise Bayern just at a completely different level at this moment. Will it remain like this? We'll see. I tend to side with Fergie's opinion about cycles.
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It could be ended already next year after the World Cup like 2010. A lot of injured and tired players - less competition in the team - and then you loose a couple of matches. You just have to go back to 2010. Bayern had a lot injured and tired players - they did not have today's bench (but even the rotation players go to Brazil) - they only reached the CL ranks last minute and had to do the qualification round. And e.g. Dortmund at that time was not today's Dortmund either - the players very unexperienced.

Some might only see the results and not the matches - but there have been some tough matches for Bayern this year in the league, too - and with little less concentration, less luck and more laziness they would have run different. Or with more FC Hollywood in the team because of unsatisfied players.

Bayern always fielded the best team in the league - but they never had a team that did not relax after e.g. CL matches.
 
Its really fecking tedious that some people on here are hellbent to turn every thread into a Moyes bitch fest. Domestic Tadpole has done nothing else but to criticise Moyes in the last two-three pages.

People come to this thread to read updates about Bundesliga rather than reading snide comments about Moyes.
 
amolbhatia100 said:
Either way, they'd walk the premier league comfortably. It would be over by now as it is in Germany.
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Bollocks. It's a shame we'll never know but it'd be a totally different story.

Bayern last season after 23 games:
19-3-1 - 63:8 (+55) - 60 points
This year:
21-2-0 - 66:10 (+56) - 65 points

WOW.
 
Jaap said:
Bollocks. It's a shame we'll never know but it'd be a totally different story.

Bayern last season after 23 games:
19-3-1 - 63:8 (+55) - 60 points
This year:
21-2-0 - 66:10 (+56) - 65 points

WOW.
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Oh yes we do know. It's blatantly obvious to pretty much anyone. The English sides are not even close to bayern's level.
 
That league is so crazy...

Hoffenheim is leading 4:1 against no. 5 Wolfsburg - 2:1 to 4:1 in about 6 minutes - 44 minutes played now...
 
Jaap said:
Everything's possible over two legs, let alone in a League campaign. It's a theory that's not as straight forward as you think.
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It's not a theory. They're miles better than any team in England. Why on earth would it be remotely close?

And the above bit is actually the other way round. Luck and form are much more relevant in cup ties. "Anything" is possible. Hull can beat united in a cup tie. "Anything" doesn't happen in league football. Over the course of the season the better teams tend to do better.
 
I'd still be surprised if Bayern were indeed 20 (!) points ahead of the likes of Chelsea, City, Arsenal & Liverpool.
 
Chelsea lost 21 point so far, so it's almost impossible even theoretically. But yeah, they would probably win 90 points from 28 games.
 
Frankfurt Coach Armin Veh announced he will leave the club at the end of the season. Veh enjoyed a 3-year long successful run at the often struggling club. After earning promotion to the 1st Bundesliga in his first year, the underdogs managed to reach the 6th place and Euro league participation in both succeeding years.
 
Jaap said:
Schalke bound, IMO.
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They should focus on Tuchel already. He's the one they need longterm. If he doesn't extend his contract at Mainz, start showing him some love, keep Keller for another year and then sign Tuchel for 2015 as soon as possible.

I like Veh, he's entertaining, imo, not a bad coach at all, but he's not that great and he seems to give a shit about longterm stability at any club with his 'only 1 year contract' thing and using that position to put pressure on the club, when he's successful and needs a contract extention, so it's drama every year.
 
Jaap said:
I'd still be surprised if Bayern were indeed 20 (!) points ahead of the likes of Chelsea, City, Arsenal & Liverpool.
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They would not as Chelsea & Co. failed a lot less than Leverkusen and Dortmund did until matchday 23. Bayern has 65 points in the Bundesliga - Dortmund has 45 - ManCity, Chelsea and Arsenal had 53, 52, 50

Like said - the most obvious difference is that Bayern kept concentration in the most matches - whereas the English teams did not against some teams they normally should win. The direct duels - that is something different.

Honigstein in his today's blog talks about the bigger clubs in the league right now having too much blips - whereas there is some low budget teams with excellent coaches and work. Bayern had a lot more work with some of the smaller teams than they had with the bigger teams...

http://www.theguardian.com/football...usen-bundesliga-moose-jens-keller-sami-hyypia
 
Armin Veh to Schalke would be a catastrophe. The club needs a tactical identity and playing philosophy that wins them the weekly Bundesliga game and is competitive on the international stage. Veh is not the man for the job, under the right circumstances he may get you good results in the beginning but none of his teams ever played two consecutive successful seasons throughout his entire career. Wolfsburg and Hamburg played horrible football under his management. Stuttgart's championship in '07 was imo a combination of luck, the turmoil at Bayern, Schalke's stupidity and extraordinary form of individual players. It went downhill pretty quickly in 07/08 afterwards.

I would rather see Thomas 'harakiri' Schaaf at S04 than Armin 'one-season-wonder' Veh. At least Schaaf's Werder Bremen had a collective approach which worked pretty well until Bremen could no longer adequately replace the constant loss of their top players.

For me Thomas Tuchel would be obviously first choice, then Thomas Schaaf, possibly Weinzierl from Augsburg and afterwards they should think about Armin Veh. Too bad Slomka is now at Hamburg, his return would have been a good idea, too.

Let's hope for Schalke's sake that this rumor is not true.
 
A coach that would do wonders for Schalke would be good ol' Lucien Favre. He's proven his ability to get results with limited funds through his tactical and pedagogical excellence. Bayern's Dante, after training under Guardiola and Heynckes as well, praised Favre especially for his understanding of the game and his brilliant approach of teaching players what to do.
Schalke, on paper, looks like a win-win situation: Schalke finally get a coach that actually knows how to make a squad work, and Favre can move up the ladder and finally manage a team in the CL, with way more funds to use for upgrading the squad.

However, I'd hate to see him leave Mönchengladbach for the horrible mess that is Schalke. Much like Hamburg, they need to have decent people in charge, otherwise they'll just go through manager after manager again for seasons to come. Not even Jopep Guardiourinho could have sustained success with those nutcases ruining the club behind the scenes. On paper, they should be among the 15 best clubs in the world with all the revenue they generate. Yet it all goes... somewhere. It's epidemic among the bigger german clubs not called Dortmund or Bayern.

So.... how about Favre for United. :cool:



Another bit of news in today:
http://www.bild.de/sport/fussball/r...tert-um-seinen-top-knipser-34933668.bild.html
Lewandowski was diagnosed with srained cruciate ligament ahead of the Poland-Scotland match. No big deal, but could turn into a katastrophe if not treated the right way immediately. Using him too soon could cause all kinds of horrible damage.
I really hope they'll give him the time needed to get rid of that problem. Alright, my motives aren't entirely altruistic, but still...
 
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Watzke is at it again. No microphone seems to be safe nowadays when he's around. And this time, it could signal a drastic change in the nature of everybody's favorite fairy tale!

http://www.spox.com/de/sport/fussba...d-strategische-partnerschaft-konzern-bvb.html

The gist of it: Watzke is intrigued by the concept of a "strategic partnership" with a big company, in other words: In order to remain competitive against the evil bavarian empire, he might just consider getting a really rich partner (something like Wolfsburg and Volkswagen) aboard to give them a lot of money while leaving Dortmund's autarky intact.
Also: He expects more from Auba, Micky and Sokratis, considers Lewandowski the 3rd best player in the world and thus can't see how they should replace him 1:1.

Bear in mind: The source is "Spox", not the epitome of quoting within context.
 
Wolfsburg is controlled by VW, that's the complete opposite of autarky.
From what I understand he says that a big corporation might buy shares on the market (Dortmund wouldn't gain money from that afaik) in order to form a (public) bond with the club. He further adds that this corporation would have to be big time and have a 100% identification with the club.

He doesn't talk about receiving lots of money however - at least not in the link.

He could be hinting at some deal with their main sponsor Evonik.
 
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Doesn't that sound like a possible increase in capital stock, which would allow a well chosen company to buy shares, become a part of the club and bring some money into the club? If not, how could the club control who buys the shares?
 
Well he says explicitly that it's not about selling more shares so I doubt they'll increase the captial stock.
I think the idea is that a company will buy a lot of shares on the market in order to prove their commitment to the club and then the club might give them a spot on the board or smth like that.
 
True, just read it again, somehow I ignored that part, my bad. I don't really see a benefit for the club then?
 
Well that company would have an increased benefit from Dortmund doing well so maybe he expects them to be more generous with their sponsoring.
Or maybe he think that partner might be powerful enough to force other companies into sponsoring Dortmund (like VW does with Wolfsburg).
 
Why RB Leipzig are sending shockwaves through German football
The Red Bull-backed team's rapid rise up the leagues is a worry for the established order but far worse is the threat to the game's structure and its cherished membership model
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Dietrich Mateschitz, the notoriously media-shy owner of Red Bull, wants RB Leipzig to eventually play in the Champions League. Photograph: Peter Rigaud/AFP/Getty
Only 30 fans had made the 500km journey from Burghausen in deepest Bavaria, but they had rehearsed their own choreography. Just before kick-off, supporters of the bottom-placed club in the German third division held up pieces of cardboard that spelled out 50+1 muss bleiben("50+1 must stay"), and then, after they'd flipped them over: Red Bullvertreiben ("Red Bull go away").



The 7,000 home fans could manage only a few half-hearted boos in response. Increasingly, they are used to this kind of reception: their club,RB Leipzig, is fast on the way to becoming the most controversial club in the country. To their supporters, they are a rare beacon of hope in the bleak landscape of east German football. But their opponents fear the team's success could unravel the foundation of the Bundesliga's recent successes.



RB Leipzig used to be a fifth-division team called SSV Markranstädt that not many had heard of even in Saxony – until 2009, when the Austrian energy drink manufacturer Red Bull bought the club's license and changed the team's name, crest and kit.



In 2010 RB moved to the 44,300-seater stadium in the centre of Leipzig, which had been built for the 2006 World Cup but wasn't in regular use: Lokomotive Leipzig, the successor of the club who won the very first title in German football in 1903, are stuck in the fourth division, while local rivals Sachsen Leipzig were dissolved in 2011.



Two years later, the former Schalke coach, Ralf Rangnick, was installed as sporting director and was handed a transfer kitty of €100m. RB Leipzig has been gradually climbing up the leagues since. They are currently second in the third division and primed for promotion.



In a rare interview in 2011, Dietrich Mateschitz, the notoriously media-shy owner of Red Bull, said: "We are developing RB Leipzig with the aim of playing in the Bundesliga in three to five years. We also want to get into the Champions League and be successful there, which is something you can only achieve with a club that plays in one of the top leagues."



Given Red Bull's financial acumen – their annual turnover exceeded the €5 billion mark for the first time last year, a third of which they are expected to invest back into marketing – that kind of statement should have touched a few nerves not just in Burghausen, but also in Munich and Dortmund.



But Germans fans don't just worry that RB Leipzig could compete with their teams for the league title in 2020. They fear that the rise of this club could undermine the very structures that have given German club football such a good name in recent years.



The so-called "50+1" rule in the statutes of the German league association (DFL) guarantees that no investor can gain majority voting rights in a club registered as a stock company, thus giving members a crucial veto over issues such a ticket prices.



RB Leipzig doesn't break the letter of the 50+1 rule – it does have a membership scheme, and it's not registered as a stock company anyway. But it does break the spirit: becoming an RB Leipzig member will set you back €800 a year, on top of a €100 first-time registration fee (for comparison, being a member of Bayern Munich costs €60 per season). On top of that, RB Leipzig reserve the right to reject any application without justification.



As a result, more than four years into the club history, RB Leipzig have only 11 members – most of them employees of Red Bull (Bayern, for comparison, has 224,000). As the journalist Christoph Biermann wrote in a recent edition of 11 Freunde magazine: "It's hard to imagine a more blatant way in which RB Leipzig could break the 50+1 rule."



Some fans dismiss such complaints as hypocrisy. They point out that other Bundesliga clubs already break the 50+1 rule, such as "company clubs" Leverkusen and Wolfsburg, or Hoffenheim, where the billionaire Dietmar Hopp is said to act as a de facto owner without holding an official function. "RB doesn't break with the principles of modern football, it merely exaggerates some of its principles", said Matthias Kiessling, who writes a perceptive blog about the club.



A self-described "tactics geek and pragmatist", Kiessling argues that Red Bull are offering a more permanent kind of investment than anything Saxony has seen since the fall of the wall. Fans of more traditional clubs in the region may express their disgust with the "plastic club", but in private they'll be proud to see an east German team put the frighteners on the traditional clubs from the west.



The much-lauded membership system, Kiessling reckons, only exists pro forma anyway, and workers' participation takes place via different channels now. "If you're a fan and you're not happy with the club hitching up ticket prices, you raise your voice on social media these days, not in the members' meetings."



Yet if you look more closely at how RB Leipzig is run, it's hard not to conclude that the club takes the commercialisation of football to a new level – not just in Germany, but Europe-wide. Other German clubs may be propped up by big business, but there is usually a geographical link between the companies and the region where the club is based: Volkswagen's offices are in Wolfsburg, software giant SAP is based in the next town down the road from Hoffenheim. Red Bull are based in Fischl, Austria, and owner Mateschitz has yet to attend a Leipzig match in person.



In the past, investors used to focus on propping up one club, but RB Leipzig is part of a global portfolio with clubs in Salzburg, New York, São Paulo and Sogakope, Ghana, all playing in the same red-and-white kit. (Rangnick acts as sporting director for both Salzburg and Leipzig, and one wonders what will happen when two Red Bull clubs face each other in the Champions League).



When Red Bull bought SSV Markranstädt in 2009, their bid to rename the club "Red Bull Leipzig" was turned down by the league – but Rasenballsport Leipzig, meaning "lawn ball sports", was waved through. In their merchandising, the club refer to themselves as Die roten Bullen, so that even the team's nickname already advertises the product. It's as if Wolfsburg were known as "The Beetles".



In brand management speak, this is known as "content marketing": rather than just pay to have their logo on a BMX cyclist's helmet, Red Bull organise the race. Rather than just sponsor Felix Baumgartner's parachute, they organise his spectacular skydive from space. Rather than sponsor a successful team, they help a team climb from the lower leagues into the Champions League and become part of the story.



Up until now, the league association has largely turned a blind eye to developments in Leipzig. But there are growing signs that other clubs could try to block the club's licence if they get promoted at the end of the season.



Bernd-Georg Spies, vice-president of FC St Pauli, one of Leipzig's potential opponents next season, told the Guardian: "When a new club is promoted from the third division, it's only right that the German football league association examines closely whether that club complies with the letter and spirit of its jurisdiction. St Pauli would encourage the football league association to look closely at clubs who actively hinder their fans from becoming members with a right to vote."



RB Leipzig have until mid-March to hand in their licence application. Should the league association reject it, or tighten the 50+1 rule altogether, the soft-drink giant could take the matter to court. Either way, the fundamental values of German football will be put to the test.
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What are the resident bundesliga fans opinion? Could bode well for footie in Saxony region.
 
Oh my, Bayern's midfield picking off where they left against Chile. Very tired performance from the rest of the squad as well. 1:0 Wolfsburg now.
 
Naldo scores for Wolfsburg, 1:0 at home, a couple of minutes after Shaqiri missed a decent chance. Could this be it? Bayern finally lose? :eek:
 
Damn, there goes that dream. Looked like Naldo hand-balled it too, and that Shaqiri scored before Mueller. Pretty jammy. :lol:
 
What a clowny goal by Bayern :lol:

There are simply not able to lose it seems. 1-1 now.
 
1:1 now. Important goal, so who scored? Müller... who else.
Turns out: The ball had crossed the line before Müller erased all doubts.

Damn, and almost the 2nd. Shaqiri missing a sitter, but a good safe from Benaglio.
 
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