Tuchel wasn't good enough for us anyway.
German Football 22/23 | 2. Bundesliga returns | Hamburg vs Schalke 20:30 |
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
Then in a special second half of the pod, Nik welcomes Natalie ( https://twitter.com/natalie_17) to discuss the fortunes of Manchester United Women as they booked a place in the FA Cup Final after a historic first ever win vs. Chelsea.
I wouldn't necessarily go that far. Alonso had a great reputation as a player and he'd be mildly exotic as a coaching appointment, so the media is likely to bring up his name and exaggerate his chances.
Hiring a foreigner, who would probably struggle with the language and whose coaching resume consists of Real Sociedad's second team sounds pretty crazy. Maaßen was a safe bet in comparison.
But who knows.. It's Leverkusen and Carro wants to win titles, so maybe he feels like he has to take these risks.
Alonso is pretty fluent in German, so the language wouldn't be an issue.
And I agree that Carro might be willing to take some risks to fundamentally shake the club up. If Vizekusen ever wants to win titles a lot has to change, so why not starting by bringing in someone who has seen the biggest clubs and knows how to win everything? On the other hand Hyypiä wasn't much different in that regard...
I'd hope that with Alonso's background, we go back to putting more emphasis on positional play again. That's enough for me to favor him over the alternatives. I'm really sick of this head through the wall brand of football.
Didn't we have the topic with professional footballers learning languages in another thread? There are these and those...
The videos have subtitles in English!
The best of all learning German was probably Pepe Reina - after less than a year...
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Published on their homepage and twitter:
Bayer 04 Leverkusen fires Seouane and Xabi Alonso is the new manager!
Bayer 04 Leverkusen fires Seouane and Xabi Alonso is the new manager!
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Windhorst basically called Hertha's new president mean, because he won't listen to him and didn't protect him against allegations of reportedly having hired some Israeli spy agency to work on Hertha's former president. As a result further cooperation is supposedly impossible, but Hertha is in luck: he's offering them the option to buy back his shares for their original price. Since we're talking about Hertha it's only natural that all this happens while Union are top of the league.
This is my subjective opinion, but I don't think clubs should hire coaches, unless they speak perfect German or are so off the charts awesome, that you're willing to take a calculated risk. Especially not when the club is already in the middle of a crisis. Mainly, because the squad hierarchy at clubs is usually German and because it's a lot harder to control the public narrative, stay away from "misunderstandings" in the press and keep the fans on your side, if you're not fully in command of the language. Though granted some of these aspects may be less important for the Leverkusen job.
Looking forward to it, a new face in the league is always interesting.
Seoane spoke perfect German and was fluent in 4 other languages or so. His football was crap but hey, he controlled the public narrative and stuff
Alonso is an exciting appointment. Imo good choice.
How did Alonso do in his stint managing Socidead reserves?
I never said that language was the only quality that matters. Your car needs fuel to drive, but having just fuel doesn't mean it can drive.Seoane spoke perfect German and was fluent in 4 other languages or so. His football was crap but hey, he controlled the public narrative and stuff
Leverkusen has just gotten sooo much more attractive
Tell me exactly how Seoanes football was crap?Seoane spoke perfect German and was fluent in 4 other languages or so. His football was crap but hey, he controlled the public narrative and stuff
It was tongue in cheek, don't take it too seriously. I wasn't his biggest fan altogether and found his football too direct and uninspired for the better part of his time with us but it certainly wasn't crap.
It's annoying how managers can have a great season and then completely fall on their asses the next, too many times it happens in the BL.
Even going back to Babbel I remember at Stuttgart had a great season then the next they were in the relegation zone and he got sacked, Favre at Herta when they made it to Europe and then next season he was sacked.
Tedesco (Schalke, Leipzig), Bosz at Levekusen, Seoane, LVG. Many more I probably don't remember off the top of my head.
Even going back to Babbel I remember at Stuttgart had a great season then the next they were in the relegation zone and he got sacked, Favre at Herta when they made it to Europe and then next season he was sacked.
Tedesco (Schalke, Leipzig), Bosz at Levekusen, Seoane, LVG. Many more I probably don't remember off the top of my head.
I don't rate Seoane very highly, but I think we can all agree that the club's supposedly most experienced or valuable players put on a clown costume this season?!
I mean, you tirelessly pointed out last season that Leverkusen was very lucky over certain periods and I believe you were right. We overperformed our xG in the first half of the season and then had a decent second half but I think we weren't as good as the final result suggested. Of course the current situation involved lots of bad luck but I think there's also a good proportion of "reality check" in it.
Thing is, to me it looks like that a lot of the bad form of players is down to coaching. We ran less than the opponent in almost all games I believe and that didn't seem to have been down to a lack of motivation but rather the players lacking instructions on positioning, runs, pressing, etc.
I also pointed out that Tah and Hradecky are clowns, that the club has no proper LB, that Frimpong is defensively weak, that it's reckless to spend €25m on a teenage CB from Belgium, because the club could use a reliable defender and that Diaby is ineffective outside of counter attacks and clubs shouldn't offer more than €30m for him. So I can't say I'm too surprised that the team struggles to score and concedes a ton of goals. What stands out to me is how qiuckly Schick's confidence has evaporated and just how deep the floor of some players is. Seoane had to go, because it becane obvious that the team was menatlly done and he didn't have it in him to turn that aroun. I would blame him for problems escalating too far, not for them being there in the first place.
Apart from Frimpong being defensively weak, I agree with most of your points but I can find more drastic problems for every club bar Leipzig, Bayern and Dortmund in the Bundesliga. Diaby is a good example of this. He has a huge price tag because clubs are willing to pay that much for this kind of player. It's not the profile I would go for either but he's still a player who would walk into most Bundesliga teams for his effectiveness alone. Also, it's not as if Seoane didn't have his say with the transfers. He was the one demanding a technically somewhat limited physical presence like Andrich in the middle and all transfers during his time here paint a rather clear picture: Strength, pace, directness. He was the one who always preferred verticality and pace over technical and subtle players. Those who stand for a more sophisticated style of football, such as Palacios, Azmoun, Paulinho, Sinkgraven, etc. always had it difficult under him and found themselves on the bench, subbed off or completely overlooked in favor off very direct players regularly, even after good performances.
There was a time in the second half of the season 2021/22 in which I thought he actually got it right and found a great balance between control and directness. We found spaces and didn't hesitate to run into them and get the ball their quickly but we also realized when those spaces were defended and we needed to be patient. But this season is the total opposite of that. It's complete chaos. We always played into dead allies or defended spaces, tried to force everything and go for second balls. And when the opponent attacked, they had acres of space. All the while running less than our opponents. And worst of all, he didn't even seem to realize it. Not once did he point out that we didn't run enough. He never worked on our positioning or a controled build up. Instead he seemed to double down on his headless chickens style. He's a very likeable fella and in that was a great asset to a rather unpopular club like us but he really, really deserved himself this sacking.
I'm not sure it was helpful for your standing that he was likeable. I feel like I already got more exposure to what kind of guy Xabi Alonso is after his press conference today than I ever got about Seoane. Seoane is a nobody from Switzerland, Alonso is a well known superstar due to his playing career. If he can back that up that will do much more for you than Seoane ever could in that regard.
Sardar has 1 goal and 1 assist against Fürth in 17 games or 634 minutes of Bundesliga football. Palacios actually started most games this season and Paulinho is the fella, who probably played half a season worth of minutes over the last four years? Are these the players that are supposed to make a difference? Diaby is so effective he has 0 goals, 1 assist this season. For whatever faults Andrich may have, he has actually been as productive as Leverkusen's star winger in terms of g/a.
And Leverkusen's problem isn't that people hate the club, it's that people are indifferent to it. A somewhat likeable nobody from Switzerland wasn't going to change that. As @stefan92 pointed out, Xabi's household name from his playing career should be much more helpful in that regard, though I'm not sure it's going to make much of dent. People aren't going to support Leverkusen because of him. Maybe it'll help getting fans to go to the stadium.
Paulinho was very good at the end of last season, much more so than Bellarabi and Adli who Seoane usually preferred. Seoane himself said that Sinkgraven is probably the one player he's treating most unfairly (yes, that's what he said).
We can go with the fairy tale of the poor Seoane who had to make up with such a terrible squad or we could admit that he actually endorsed the one dimensional, lazy and uninspired brand of football we've witnessed this season.
So what Ive gathered is that Leverkusen is a horrible team with very bad players in nearly every position, got it. Mysterious how this team was able to break thhe previous goal scoring record in a season last year and finished 3rd...
I'd call the team terribly inconsistent and mentally suspect, rather than flat out terrible.
Sounds like a certain time in black and yellow.
It applies to a lot of teams, the question is to which degree.
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I guess it's a back three?
---------------------Hradecky
--------Tapsoba-----Tah-------Hincapie
Frimpong---Andrich---Aranguiz----Bakker
-------CHO-------Schick-------Diaby
Compared to Seoane's last lineup against Porto, Xabi only dropped Hlozek and added Bakker, with Hincapie moving inwards from LB to CB to make way for him
Looking at the table this is a proper 6-pointer. This is what they are up against:
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Tah vs Terodde and Hradecky vs himself looking like the key matchups of this fixture.
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2:0 Leverkusen after 41 minutes. Schalke is really bad, but Leverkusen look well organized and control the game.
I think this is more a case of Schalke being "this bad". They have absolutely no attacking threat and play this weird defensive approach, where their front line is pressing, but their defense stays relatively deep. Making it easy to outplay their attempts and nearly impossible not to control the game. On top of that they just leave Frimpong wide open all game long, so Leverkusen get a free advance into the final third every time they switch the ball to him. It was a similar story against Dortmund, where they finished the game with 0 shots on goal.
Guess Frank Kramer will be the next manager that gets fired.
Xaball
Schalke has a second division squad and is playing like a second division team. Still, you can only beat whats in front of you and Schalke only got really hammered once this season against Union, who scored with almost every attempt. Its certainly an encouraging performance from Leverkusen.
I don't think you can say many negative things about their performance today, but I think Schalke is too weak to call this a step in the right direction (beyond the fact that they won three points).
Dortmund starting with 3 ex Bayern guys
Bayern starting with 0 ex Dortmund guys
Dortmund weakening their rivals
Bayern starting with 0 ex Dortmund guys
Dortmund weakening their rivals
Diabolical reffing so far, three bookings in the first 13 minutes
Musiala needs to come home.
Not a great goal to concede
Should have saved that