DISQUS

I actually like "der Tisch ist ehrlich" better than "die Tabelle lügt/en nicht". Maybe you can consider renaming this feature.

"I've always considered Slomka to be someone who's good with good players"

Does that mean you think he did a bad job at Schalke? Or do you think Schalke have good players? ;-)

I think someone like Slomka knows how to give a team defensive stability. Something that Gladbach need more than anything. He can develop young players. In the long term, he's a coach who could establish Gladbach in the upper half of the table again.

Small correction: The perfect cross to Pizarro was delivered by the non-existant Özil and not Frings. You are excused if you relied on a German stream, where the commenter wrongly declared that the cross came from Frings as well. :-)

I disagree. I wouldn't say that the sporting director (or director of football or technical director ...) + coach combo is any better or worse than the English style manager. Some Premier League fans who look at the role of some directors of football in the EPL recently might get a wrong idea. I mean whether it's the manager who makes poor decisions when it comes to selling or buying players or a director of football doesn't really matter. Especially when the club owners put a limit on the transfer budget or even request the manager to sell players to balance the books.

Because normally a good sporting director isn't simply buying and selling players independently from the coach. The two are cooperating and a coach in Germany can have a similarly strong impact on a good signing policy (e.g. Favre at Hertha) as a talented sporting director like Beiersdorfer at Hamburg. And both also rely on their scouting network etc. on top of that anyway. Felix Magath could have made the exact same signings at Wolfsburg if they had installed a sporting director. In fact Magath is keen to install one in the future so he can focus more on his responsibilities as a coach. One advantage of a good sporting director is, that the coach gets additional options (players the sporting director kept an eye on etc) and opinions. When the coach and sporting director don't get along with each other then that's a different story of course.

Or Rensing turns out to be a flop... Though, I hope he comes good. I guess some big club in Europe would be a good alternative, but is there any in need of a good goalkeeper at the moment? AC Milan perhaps?

" The biggest question I have is what was their captian Freidrich doing during the argument over the ball?!"

Filming yet another bad Nutella commercial with Kuranyi, Jansen and Borowski:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZRtDQKiJ0w

Have to disagree. There's nothing debatable about the offside decision and the penalty. Those were bad calls. But Rafinha should have been sent off twice and giving no overtime was also a call more in Schalke's than in Dortmund's favor, so it was a balanced but still awful performance by the ref.

"though they're gone in Munich, Frankfurt, Duisburg, and a few other new stadia"

Those stadiums all have standing sections.

Wow. :-)

You might want to look for a better source for the attendance figures though. The Bochum vs. Wolfsburg game had an attendance of a bit over 20000 according to both the TV highlights I saw and the reports I read.

http://www.weltfussball.de/zuschauer/bundesliga...

"You learn e.g. that the Wolfsburger are ungrateful, the Herthaner are depressed, and the Cologners are happy only at the beginning of the season."

How could you learn that, given that Hertha and Cologne have yet to play at home?

You are all way too pessimistic about Berlin. I've followed the team during their pre-season in Eastern Europe and their friendly against Liverpool and Favre's football philosophy is more and more evident in their games. Hertha made some good signings, always have a few youngsters ready from their academy and they finished in 6th place in the second half of the season table last year...

Taylor scored a stunning goal against Oberhausen on his debut:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ltj8SCoyeI

Jump to the three minute mark for the goal.

A club can't confiscate someone's passport. And why didn't Bremen do the same with Diego then? The Telegraph is the only paper reporting this story and I would give them credit for some bad journalism there.

"Werder Bremen has also refused to allow Dusko Tosic of Serbia to join his team and has reportedly confiscated his passport."

A club can't confiscate someone's passport and it has been reported nowhere.

Schalke and Bremen are Bundesliga clubs, but so are:
Hamburg who released Vadis Odjidja-Ofoe and Vincent Kompany.
Bayern who released Breno and Jose Ernesto Sosa.
Stuttgart who released Georges Mandjeck.
Dortmund who released Patrick Njambe.
Hoffenheim who released Chinedu Obasi.
...

And as Dan pointed out, Barca are refusing to let Messi go. And they didn't want to release Ronaldinho either, when he was still playing for them.

"Perhaps this helps to explain why the Premier League is head and shoulders above the Bundesliga these days when it comes to international recognition and popularity."

Barca has bucket loads of international recognition and popularity.

I think Bremen and Schalke could have handled the situation much better, e.g. like Hamburg who brokered a compromise with Kompany, who will do all the pre-season training with his club and then travel to Beijing.

But FIFA needs to take some of the blame as well. There's a legal framework for World Cups, Euros, Copas and all those Uxx youth tournaments, which clubs must follow. Blatter can say that clubs should or must or whatever, but the fact remains, that FIFA failed to create a similar framework for the Olympics - for whatever reason. And the lack of any clear legally binding rules has caused the current situation in the first place.