Bochum 2-2 Schalke: another miracle return
By: jhb |
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I only got the last 20 minutes of the match, but those were worth more than the 70 min before that. 2-0 down at half-time and still when I switched on.. apparently it had been a match on equal terms, with a home team that got few chances and unlucky at least once (Prokoph hitting the post). During the second half, Schalke went to simply managing the game instead of dominating it, giving us plenty of space. Come time, come chances, and with 15 minutes left we seriously started creating some chances. Neuer deflected an almost own goal by Bordon, and soon after that Hashemian of all people scored a first to ensure drama in the final minutes. A beautiful finish after a corner.
With two minutes into injury time, Hashemian (again! was he drugged or anything?) ran half the pitch to cross for Sestak who headed home the equalizer. His first contact on the counter-attack was simply great, see the video below. Looks like he’s finally returning to the form we remember before he left a couple of years ago.
Next up is Hertha on Saturday, let’s see if we can break their amazing 2-games-unbeaten streak.
Category: Team News
VfL Winter Video Highlights: free kick expert C. Fuchs
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Found a compilation of Fuchs’ three goals in three matches. Quelle beauties!
Category: Team NewsCatching up: half a season comes full circle
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Some sort of review on the first half of the season, which ended just as it had begun, though everything in between was completely different.
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Category: Team NewsBochumers score to put underdogs to the World Cup
By: jhb | 1 Comment
My oh my, why don’t they manage this back home, err, in their club? See below for the video evidence that both striker Zlatko Dedic and defender Antar Yahia (which in english commentary seems to sound like Yaya, in german more like Yaheeya, and in the video below I can’t even make out whether he is mentioned at all) still know how to score, and not too shabby at that:
Dedic for Slovenia:
Yahia for Algeria in a match of exceptional and altogether ugly circumstances:
The same in slightly better video quality here.
Add to this Stanislaw Sestak who qualified with Slovakia, and we have three players who regularly feature for their national team at the World Cup. Might be good news for us, might very well be bad news for their countries..
Category: Team NewsAnd you thought it’d never happen
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.. but the VfL has eventually announced a new coach. (or was it “..but the Bochum offside is posting again”). Today, Heiko Herrlich has been appointed as new head coach, coming along is his assistant Iraklis Metaxas (who is already causing my keyboard some headache).
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Category: Team NewsWe did it
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Nürnberg 0-1 Bochum! Against all odds, we go home with all points and without conceding a goal. I haven’t seen the match, but apparently Nürnberg refused to play football, which might have helped us a lot. It doen’t lessen the sweet taste of victory, though, and in particular the timing is perfect. The first proper Bundesliga match of interim coach Heinemann, coming from a 0-3 home bashing by Schalke 04 in the Cup, and with two key players still injured (Sestak with a broken hand, goalie Heerwagen with a broken jaw), the best we could hope for was to see a good fight. Turns out, Nürnberg was exactly the right away trip at the right time.
And most of all, in the past two matches, the utter unknown that is Andreas Luthe (the replacement keeper for Heerwagen from our reserves) looks a very promising candidate! Though at their age, he might not exactly be a Neuer or Adler – but given that he used to be n-th choice after any number of less-than-average keepers before, I expected someone like blunder-Vander. Quite the opposite! He was really good against Schalke (which might sound weird, but the goals were really due to terrible defensive work), and though I haven’t seen today’s match, the reports seem to indicate that a) he wasn’t hard pressed to perform by Nürnberg, b) the one time he was tested seriously he was there, and most importantly c) he didn’t produce any howlers, something any recent Bochum keeper was known to be capable of in games that even remotely looked like must-win. (and d): doesn’t he just look like the keen kid from the youth teams eager to move to the big stage and therefore deserving a chance 
?)
Category: Team NewsMore rumours
By: jhb | 1 Comment
Two more names I’ve heard linked to the VfL on some forum or other: Jörn Andersen and Wolfgang Wolf. Both are a) mostly unknown and b) mostly unsuccessful. (and c) mostly harmless). Maybe we’re indeed looking toward Heinemann as permanent solution? I doubt it, let’s see what the week will tell.
Category: Team NewsQuick Link
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Make sure to visit Luka over at the Assyriska offside, he has fantastic example of a shit-lookalike of our prospective new coach.
Category: Team NewsPredicting the obvious: Koller fired
By: jhb | 2 Comments
That’s that, then. Marcel Koller has been fired yesterday afternoon, with a statement crediting him for keeping us in the top flight 4 years in a row (unseen since 1993); in the end not being able to come to terms with a team that had lost its trust in the head coach cost him the job. Plus, the atmosphere in the stands was anything but friendly towards him right from the beginning of the 09/10 season, which I thought was a tad unfair, and certainly didn’t help him keep the job. I was hoping that we’d somehow scramble to a win against Mainz this past weekend, giving Koller a lifeline until the market might offer a coaching solution. Because let’s face it, giving MK the sack is one thing, but finding a suitable replacement might be a different headache altogether.
Koller was not exactly the “live fast, die young” type of character like the chap we had before him (the now-unmentionable Peter Neururer), but from the start he had a systematic approach, made the team play a 4-4-2 diamond that they seemed to get along with very well after some learning curve. During the first Bundesliga season, I got the impression that while progress might be slow with that guy, it might be pointing toward continuity and stability, which would have cemented the grey image of boredom that is perceived upon mentioning the VfL anywhere in Germany, but it was a nice change to step out of the up-and-down lift between the two Bundesligas at the top floor. The flipside of that is that we didn’t see any UEFA cup action in the past couple of years, but on the face of it both our previous international endeavours were very lucky to begin with. I’d love to see something like the 5-3 drama against Trabzonspor or the 2-0 lead after 15 minutes at Ajax again, but even more than that I would love to never see the “down” button pressed again. And the question remains how and with whom are we going to get that?
The short answer is “money”, and I’m afraid the long answer looks a lot like “money, money, money”. I guess I’ll leave that for now, might pick it up again in a later post, the more pressing issue is the who, and there’s not much on the market to ignite the fires of hope in the east stand: the tabloids have Mirko Sloma and Klaus Augenthaler as favourites for the job, both of which I don’t much like. Slomka might be a knowledgable expert of the game, but I don’t think he is one to steer a damaged boat successfully into the harbour. For some reason, I can’t wrap my head around him shouting at players at half time. Plus, he will have a hard time winning the supporters, since he has a Schalke past. Anyway, he might still be the best of the rest, if Klaus Augenthaler is the only alternative. His time at Leverkusen was not exactly successful. He was Wolfsburg’s last manager before Magath and they finished just above relegation, although with a squad quite different from today’s (no Dzeko/Grafite, no Misimovic, no Dejagah, no Schäfer, no Benaglio) (but still…).
Further alternatives might be Mike Büskens (also with a Schalke past), Dieter Hecking (please not) or Wolfgang Wolf (who has been fired just last week from some club in Greece, I think?). Of course, Jürgen Klinsmann has nothing to do at the moment, haha.
For the moment, Frank “Funny” Heinemann and Dariusz Wosz have taken over, both with a solid backing by the fans (one a club legend and the other one been around for so long that no one remembers the time before him) but without much of head coach experience (Heinemann has played that interim role a couple of times before and fulfills it just fine, but I doubt he’ll ever make a decent long term coach anywhere. Wosz was our Under-18 coach before, if I am not mistaken). Although if anyone can tell me why on earth the guy got the nickname “funny” I’d be grateful – it certainly isn’t the interviews.
(Update: Pictures)
Category: Team NewsCatching up matchdays 1-5: no rejoicing
By: jhb | 1 Comment
The start of the season was pretty much the usual affair of “uh, is it started yet?” sleepiness of all our players in the DFB cup and the first half of the first match. I don’t know what kind of lemons they serve in the Ruhrstadion locker rooms, but the second half of that match looked like they had woken up and no mistake. The first away trip was a more or less expected hammering at Schalke 04, followed by a surprise win at home to Berlin (who are terribly disappointing so far and find themselves almost at the bottom). So far – so good, you’d think. But another two losses (Leverkusen and in Hoffenheim, (where we couldn’t half repeat last year’s performance), and shouts of “Koller raus” could be heard surprisingly loud, given that it was still only four weeks into the season.
What the heck did they expect? Virtually no signings over the summer (and of the few, only Johansson seems to get regular first-team starts) and the whole of last season pretty much pointed to what this year was going to be like, so why blame the manager? He could have tried to insist on more (and more expensive) signings, but I it’s the president etc who seem to think we’ll get away with this squad. Koller has to take the blame for last year’s signings, though: two “happy family” signings of former Bochum strikers who turned out a) injured most of the time and b) abject whenever they were played. This leaves us with Klimowitz (the only half-decent signing of that year) and Sestak up front, one of which is usually injured in any given week.
The back four are performing more consistent and, most importantly, the centre backs can be chosen 2-out-of-4 equivalently good players, so in case we stay up another year, it will likely be thanks to a good defense. Let’s hope Epallé and Azouagh will score the goals our strikers can’t be bothered to score…
Today, however, we have matchday 6 running. Mainz is visiting us, and the fans decided to keep silent for the first 18:48 minutes (a reference to the VfL’s founding year 1848). The team gave the right answer by scoring in the 5th minute, making everybody cheer.
(Shortly before half-time, Mainz have just equalised. !!UPDATE!! 40 seconds after that, we take the lead again! Klimowicz! I’m off to grab a beer, talk to you again after the match.)
Category: Team News
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