German Football 20/21

[do.ob]

I see. Yes, Dortmund (assuming they qualify for CL) has had an ok-ish season with too much struggle, but nothing outstanding I think, I believe we agree there

The only outstanding thing is Terzic's personal narrative:

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And the fact that he's now supposed to return to an assistant role.

 

[hasanejaz88]

The only outstanding thing is Terzic's personal narrative:

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And the fact that he's now supposed to return to an assistant role.

If they do make it to the UCL, I think he's done a tremendous job. He was very unlucky to go out against City and matched them in both legs. Add to that winning the DFB Pokal, it's a good season for him and Dortmund.

Good to hear he's staying on in the management team.

 

[Suedesi]

Frankfurt's collapse has been hilarious. A one point in March they were 7-8 points ahead. Bottle job

 

[Gibb11]

Have Dortmund won football or something? highlight the word Dortmund and right click, search with google...

 

[roonster09]

Have Dortmund won football or something? highlight the word Dortmund and right click, search with google...

Same for Leicester City. It's nice tbh.

 

[do.ob]

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Werder getting desperate.

 

[FootballHQ]

Wow Schaaf still in the background at Bremen....I can remember him getting the job there in the late 90s and staying for a long time.

Amazed they didn't make the change sooner. On paper Leverkusen is a very tough last day game for them compared to teams around them....but well it's Leverkusen isn't it who's top 4 bid has predictably fizzled out with woeful results for last three months so wouldn't rule out a win at all.

 

[Boavista]

I didn't even notice Hertha are safe now. So now it's between Bielefeld, Werder and Köln. With Hamburg very possibly missing out on promotion, have there ever been more big teams in the 2.Bundesliga, or any second division anywhere?

Schalke, Bremen and Hamburg were practically fighting for the second spot behind Bayern for large parts of the 2000s, or even 2010s, and regularly played in Europe. Köln aren't strangers to the 2nd league in the past two decades but also too big a club and don't tend to stick around long before securing a promotion again.

Then there's Hannover, St.Pauli, Fortuna among others. And possible promotions in Hansa Rostock, Dynamo Dresden and maybe even 1860 Munich. Could be a very exciting season if fans are allowed back in the stadium! It wouldn't surprise me if it ends up breaking attendance records.

 

[do.ob]

Wow Schaaf still in the background at Bremen....I can remember him getting the job there in the late 90s and staying for a long time.

Amazed they didn't make the change sooner. On paper Leverkusen is a very tough last day game for them compared to teams around them....but well it's Leverkusen isn't it who's top 4 bid has predictably fizzled out with woeful results for last three months so wouldn't rule out a win at all.

Their last game is against Gladbach actually. Which means after Dortmund "made" Bayern champions by beating Leipzig and Schalke (likely) secured Dortmund's top four finish Gladbach also have the opportunity to save Cologne.

I think all bets are off now:
Cologne have all the pressure against a Schalke side who have nothing to lose, but lots of players and a coach, who are playing for their future, be it a nice move elsewhere or a (more) important role during the rebuild.

No one knows what impact Schaaf will have and whether Gladbach even wants to win - the last few games raise the suspicion that they wouldn't be too heartbroken about dodging the poor man's CL.

The same could be said about Stuttgart. Do they want to make top 7 and will they try everything for a win, or will it be a relaxed affair for them against Bielefeld?

 

[FootballHQ]

Oh yeah yeah they played Leverkusen last home game and it was 0-0 of course.

'Gladbach been pretty awful last few months aswell and lack of motivation with Marco Rose moving on so I'd say the general summary still remains for last Bremen game, looks tougher on paper than it probably will be in reality.

 

[Zehner]

Growth is not everything. Cash flow is important too. That's part of the commercial aspect.

Also our growth had more to do with Sir Alex having already built an enormous footballing empire. We were more successful than RM until 2013 btw, and were (maybe still are) the world's most famous football club. That's Sir Alex and his success exploding and being maintained by Glazers who had a great hand dealt to them by that era.

And like I said, we can grow 5 times over the next 10 years, but it the glazers take everything that comes in our for themselves and their debts, that's hurting us financially.

A billion in debt payments. A billion.

Of course. See, I'm not arguing that United could not have grown even more. That's quite obvious given how much money they took out of the club. But my impression always was - both from reading up in here as well as from overall media reports and stuff - that the Glazers developed the commercial side of United quite professionally but did very poorly regarding "football discplines": Squad management, scouting, personnel decisions, etc. My line of thinking was that a club which hasn't done particularly well on the pitch in the last 8 years but still remains on top of the food chain although it has to pay such dividends to the owners has to do something right on the commercial side.

I also think you're overestimating the effect SAF had on the revenue growth. This chart shows that much of your revenue growth occurred after his retirement and this one indicates that it had much to do with retail and merchandising. Of course you can't see those numbers in isolation and of course his performance had much to do with United becoming the international brand they're now but I believe one can't deny that the club does an incredibly good job at monetizing that brand, especially since this is even harder when the success on the pitch isn't there. And at least to me it seems that the Glazers played their part in that by setting the course, e. g. by appointing Woodward etc.

 

[NoLogo]

HSV has done it again. Botched promotion number 3. Incredible.

 

[hellhunter]

HSV

 

[charlenefan]

Frankfurt's collapse has been hilarious. A one point in March they were 7-8 points ahead. Bottle job

what's happened to them? The German equivalent of West Ham where they were just outdoing themselves to be there in the first place?

 

[do.ob]

The more dramatic news for me is that both Bochum and Kiel can still be caught by Fürth. The most bland side I could imagine getting promoted.

what's happened to them? The German equivalent of West Ham where they were just outdoing themselves to be there in the first place?

something like:
25% being fortunate to make it that far in the first place
75% Hütter announcing the departure to Gladbach pulling the plug on their team

 

[JuliaScalaR]

what's happened to them? The German equivalent of West Ham where they were just outdoing themselves to be there in the first place?

Since it became public that Hütter will leave for Gladbach, things went downhill for them(quite similar to Gladbach and Rose leaving for Dortmund). Also I think that Frankfurt were punching above their weight a little bit. I think these are the two main reasons.

 

[do.ob]

What's going on with Mainz, they are playing like they are hung over?

 

[Blackwidow]

What's going on with Mainz, they are playing like they are hung over?

Would that really surprise you, if some of them did throw a party yesterday after the results confirmed that they cannot be relegated anymore?

 

[charlenefan]

Sancho assist

 

[do.ob]

Sweet shot from Guerreiro

Would that really surprise you, if some of them did throw a party yesterday after the results confirmed that they cannot be relegated anymore?

I know. I was joking, because it's still funny to see a Bundesliga level side play with such low intensity.

 

[NoLogo]

Second Dortmund goal, second Sancho assist.

Way too easy though how he can just dance through Mainz defense without any pressure.

 

[Sylar]

That's cl confirmed for Dortmund right? With this win

 

[do.ob]

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Mölders with one of the better rants:

"You saw it in the game, he ran into a wall and threw himself on the ground and started to cry. I have never seen that in my life. My son is eleven years old, if I give him a shove he keeps standing, but he [oppo player] runs into me and starts to cry like a school boy and now a big mouth.. like the press officer.. that's how I like it.. but they will get the bill on the last matchday [relegation]."

 

[charlenefan]

Haaland gets his customary goal

 

[2 man midfield]

That’s Dortmund in the CL then. Sancho just went up by 10m.

 

[do.ob]

The penalty won't really matter in the end, but it's a bit comical to attest Hazard an unnatural arm position, when he had an opponent jump into his back..

 

[Tacitus56AD]

Mölders with one of the better rants:

"You saw it in the game, he ran into a wall and threw himself on the ground and started to cry. I have never seen that in my life. My son is eleven years old, if I give him a shove he keeps standing, but he [oppo player] runs into me and starts to cry like a school boy and now a big mouth.. like the press officer.. that's how I like it.. but they will get the bill on the last matchday [relegation]."

when your so bad you only get to trashtalk your city-rivals second team.
-and yes most of them still are schoolboys!

 

[giorno]

when your so bad you only get to trashtalk your city-rivals second team.
-and yes most of them still are schoolboys!

What teams are those?

 

[stefan92]

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Mölders with one of the better rants:

"You saw it in the game, he ran into a wall and threw himself on the ground and started to cry. I have never seen that in my life. My son is eleven years old, if I give him a shove he keeps standing, but he [oppo player] runs into me and starts to cry like a school boy and now a big mouth.. like the press officer.. that's how I like it.. but they will get the bill on the last matchday [relegation]."

Mölders just is a legend in his own right

Someone with that body should not be expected to play professional football, yet he is the top scorer of the third league

 

[stefan92]

What teams are those?

1860 München (Mölders team) played against the second team of Bayern München

 

[do.ob]

https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-borussia-dortmunds-season-turned-on-unfair-exit-clause/a-57548455

Can't say that opinion is wrong. Rose -> Dortmund, Hütter -> Frankfurt and to a lesser degree Nagelsmann -> Bayern have derailed three teams at the top this year. If there's one lesson to learn from this crazy season it's that clubs need to find a better way of dealing with this stuff.


What a goal from Philipp, @GifLord . Nagelsfraud outcoached yet again!

 

[Hansi Fick]

https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-borussia-dortmunds-season-turned-on-unfair-exit-clause/a-57548455

Can't say that opinion is wrong. Rose -> Dortmund, Hütter -> Frankfurt and to a lesser degree Nagelsmann -> Bayern have derailed three teams at the top this year. If there's one lesson to learn from this crazy season it's that clubs need to find a better way of dealing with this stuff.

It really is ridiculous what's been going on. All these managers declaring they're departing to rival clubs at the apex of the season, results completely breaking down, it's actually absolutely unacceptable stuff. From the clubs, and the managers.

 

[Sphaero]

https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-borussia-dortmunds-season-turned-on-unfair-exit-clause/a-57548455

Can't say that opinion is wrong. Rose -> Dortmund, Hütter -> Frankfurt and to a lesser degree Nagelsmann -> Bayern have derailed three teams at the top this year. If there's one lesson to learn from this crazy season it's that clubs need to find a better way of dealing with this stuff.


What a goal from Philipp, @GifLord . Nagelsfraud outcoached yet again!

I can, at least partially. Two reasons:

1. The clear undertone that Frankfurts collapse following Hütters announcement was needed for us to secure CL football. Now, I will be the first one to call our overall season unsatisfactory. We sit at 61 points with a GD of +27 with one game to go against an opponent with nothing to play for anymore. That is at least 10 points below what would constitute in a good season, around 15 points below a great one. However, even if we would end the season right now, thanks to the winning streak we went on after the Frankfurt loss, we still sit on a point tally that would have been enough for secure top 4 in 14 out of the last 15 Bundesliga seasons (the sole statistic outlier being last season). The disruption followng Hütters announcement could certainly have been a factor in Frankfurts weak season third. It could also been an often seen case of a teams season performance evening itself out or a lack of experience to perform well in the crunch time of the season. Eintracht Frankfurt is after all not the only team we passed by now. We also got ahead of Wolfsburg thanks to a better GD (mostly the result of the direct win ays part of the beforementioned winning streak).

2. The entire second to last paragraph. The notion that what Bayern did with Leipzig was somehow the more sportsmen like and morally superior act is a stretch to say the least. We used an existing contract clause, which was agreed between Rose and Gladbach long before (the irony that Eberl signed Rose thanks to such a clause in the first place should not be ignored either), Bayern directly poached Nagelsmann by throwing a world record sum at Leipzig. They had to go to these lengths to break up a contract to recify the mess they themselves created internally by burning all bridges with Flick. We might have continued an ongoing trend and started a chain reaction, Bayern might very well have started a brand new one.

I don´t even want to elevate one act over the other. Both are pretty much the same: selfserving actions to attempt to get their clubs ahead out of a position of power. The big fishes eat the smaller ones, tale as old as commercialised football.

 

[do.ob]

I can, at least partially. Two reasons:

1. The clear undertone that Frankfurts collapse following Hütters announcement was needed for us to secure CL football. Now, I will be the first one to call our overall season unsatisfactory. We sit at 61 points with a GD of +27 with one game to go against an opponent with nothing to play for anymore. That is at least 10 points below what would constitute in a good season, around 15 points below a great one. However, even if we would end the season right now, thanks to the winning streak we went on after the Frankfurt loss, we still sit on a point tally that would have been enough for secure top 4 in 14 out of the last 15 Bundesliga seasons (the sole statistic outlier being last season). The disruption followng Hütters announcement could certainly have been a factor in Frankfurts weak season third. It could also been an often seen case of a teams season performance evening itself out or a lack of experience to perform well in the crunch time of the season. Eintracht Frankfurt is after all not the only team we passed by now. We also got ahead of Wolfsburg thanks to a better GD (mostly the result of the direct win ays part of the beforementioned winning streak).

2. The entire second to last paragraph. The notion that what Bayern did with Leipzig was somehow the more sportsmen like and morally superior act is a stretch to say the least. We used an existing contract clause, which was agreed between Rose and Gladbach long before (the irony that Eberl signed Rose thanks to such a clause in the first place should not be ignored either), Bayern directly poached Nagelsmann by throwing a world record sum at Leipzig. They had to go to these lengths to break up a contract to recify the mess they themselves created internally by burning all bridges with Flick. We might have continued an ongoing trend and started a chain reaction, Bayern might very well have started a brand new one.

I don´t even want to elevate one act over the other. Both are pretty much the same: selfserving actions to attempt to get their clubs ahead out of a position of power. The big fishes eat the smaller ones, tale as old as commercialised football.

I mean the disruption from Hütter's announcement is quite easy to spot in their results:
Before: 3 wins in a row, including against Wolfsburg and Dortmund - quite the opposite from choking on the finishing line. Three losses in 28 games.
After: 0-4 against Gladbach the very next game, doubling their losses for the season from three to six within five games. Only winning the one game.

I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that without the disruption they probably would be playing CL next season. And would Wolfsburg still have dropped a two goal lead against Leipzig if they needed a win for top four? Would Dortmund have had the same drive, e.g. forcing a late goal against Leipzig, if they didn't know that Frankfurt was a rapidly sinking ship there for the taking? In any case to me the piece isn't really about Dortmund (they are just a foil to illustrate a point), it's about the havoc that these release clauses for coaches have caused and how they are bound to help bigger clubs "screw over" lesser clubs.
And I think in that sense you're reading too much into that Nagelsmann example: I think he's just saying that while it didn't help them in the short term either at least they had some control over the situation, which managed to leverage into a huge bite out of Bayern's budget.

It's an absolutely terrible situation for the league if several of it's upper midtable/top four hopefuls (for this season we know of Hütter, Rose and Glasner) just have this button in their coach's contract that ends their season in the blink of an eye. I don't have a simple solution, but something needs to change. Maybe the clubs below the top three have to try and negotiate some gentleman's agreement, where they promise each other that no one will offer their coach a release clause, so no one can demand it.

 

[Synco]

Stating the obvious here, but Terzic has done a great job under difficult conditions. Winning the cup and securing top 4 is as good as it gets result-wise from where he started. Ups and downs were to be expected. This season could have ended very badly for Dortmund, now things look reasonably good again, both for the transfer summer and next season.

 

[do.ob]

One thing that is curious are Nagelsmann's results against the top 5 of Bundesliga.
This season: 0W-5D-3L
Last season: 1W-6D-1L

Why is that? It's not like he's just getting shown up in these matches, especially since he got some results in the CL. One argument could be (a lack of) attacking quality, but that isn't fully satisfying either, as the top team usually offer a bit more space than other teams and last season he still had Timo Werner and to a lesser degree Patrick Schick anyway.

 

[stefan92]

One thing that is curious are Nagelsmann's results against the top 5 of Bundesliga.
This season: 0W-5D-3L
Last season: 1W-6D-1L

Why is that? It's not like he's just getting shown up in these matches, especially since he got some results in the CL. One argument could be (a lack of) attacking quality, but that isn't fully satisfying either, as the top team usually offer a bit more space than other teams and last season he still had Timo Werner and to a lesser degree Patrick Schick anyway.

Against whom? Against teams that have better/similar quality as the top 5 he also does not have many wins if I remember correctly. He wins everything he has to win, but rarely games where he could or at least should win.

I believe this was different during his time at Hoffenheim who had a much worse squad, but it happened to him at Leipzig. That opens the question if it is really his fault or more a problem of the Leipzig squad?

 

[do.ob]

Against whom? Against teams that have better/similar quality as the top 5 he also does not have many wins if I remember correctly. He wins everything he has to win, but rarely games where he could or at least should win.

I believe this was different during his time at Hoffenheim who had a much worse squad, but it happened to him at Leipzig. That opens the question if it is really his fault or more a problem of the Leipzig squad?

Last year his CL record was 6W - 2D - 2L, even if you discount the group stage games he beat Spurs twice and Atletico once. This year he beat PSG, Utd and mighty Basaksehir of course. Certainly looks a lot better than 1 win in 16 matches in Bundesliga.

 

[Boavista]

I think in some ways Nagelsmann's football ideas are a bit vulnerable when playing against better sides, or just teams that are capable of beating Leipzig's press and can effectively hit them on the counter. One of the aspects he gets the most praise for, and always gets brought up by commentators etc, is that his teams are very adaptable and can change formation between and even during a match. There's obviously some truth to it, as Leipzig regularly switches between back four and back three formations depending on who they're playing. But I wonder if to some extent that's become a bit of a gimmick for Nagelsmann, like his signature move, and whether or not that could actually sometimes be detrimental to his sides.

Obviously that's hard to prove, and I'm not sure about that myself, but if you look at how he has his teams play it's clear he favours certain formations against some sides. For instance, while his record against Bayern isn't positive, he's only lost once against them since joining Leipzig and generally those matches have been pretty even. I think in most of those matches he's had Leipzig play more conservatively, and more classic back 4 formations or with players that let him switch to a back 4 easily during a match.
On the other hand he almost always loses against Dortmund while playing three at the back and pushing his team forward. If you didn't keep an eye on the scoreline, Leipzig has often looked dominant in those performances but end up losing anyway because they get exposed at the back as Dortmund has the quality to counter them. Even against United it looked similar. In the first leg they were toothless up front but still dominated the centre of the pitch easily, and ultimately got picked apart at the back. Again playing three at the back. The second leg they showed more of an attacking edge, but even then they looked fragile once United woke up. Similar story against a Liverpool side low on confidence, but strong on the counter.

There might not be a clear correlation between 3 vs 4 backline, because clearly Leipzig also do well with their favoured 3-4-2-1 or 3-5-2, but against good opponents I get the impression they're less likely to collapse at the back when playing two CBs or fullbacks who are actually part of the backline. Overloading the midfield area works well against teams who don't have pacy players to exploit the space left behind, like Atletico last year in the Champions League, but dangerous when they do.
Or maybe against some good teams Nagelsmann becomes too ambitious regarding possession and pressing high up. Perhaps it can be put down to his teams' age or inexperience in the bigger matches. So far they haven't made the same mistakes against Bayern it seems, although then again those matches are some of the few where Leipzig doesn't have much of a choice but to somewhat cede possession.

It reminds a bit of problems Guardiola's teams often had, but with a weaker team. Dominating possession and overloading the centre is very effective against weaker teams, but against strong teams it can become vulnerable.

 

[FatTails]

What a weekend this was. Schalke beating Frankfurt, somehow, and helping out Dortmund to qualify to the UCL was the big story. What were the odds of a Schalke win before the game?!

A bit annoyed for Frankfurt. Would’ve loved for them and BVB to qualify, instead of Wolfsburg. Their form since beating Dortmund and Wolfsburg has been disappointing.