Bochumers score to put underdogs to the World Cup
By: jhb |
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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 News
And 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
By: jhb | 3 Comments
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 NewsWe’re back, Mk. II
By: jhb | 1 Comment
Increasingly boring headlines means increasingly entertaining football by my beloved VfL! On saturday, driving back from a friend’s wedding, sleep deprived and just in the mood for a rainy Bundesliga sunday on the car stereo, I listened to a season starter v Mönchengladbach that even put the usual bleakness of your typical Bochum start-of-the-season to new heights. 3-0 down at half-time, reporter talking about players without backbone, totally asleep, apparently not on the pitch at all etc etc. Then I arrived at home, hardly wanting to tune in again to listen to a new record first day loss or something..
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Category: Team NewsWe’re back!
By: jhb | Add Comments
I apologize for not writing earlier, but work has gotten the better of me lately. Luckily, all the important deadlines fell into the summer break, and just in time for the new season I’m up and running the Bochum Offside again. So what did we miss? Not much, in terms of transfers all news are old news, Johansson is the biggest signing this summer, we didn’t have too big losses. An interesting side note from he prep games, though: Marcel Koller has dropped Portuguese national team runner-up goalie Fernandes in favour of young Philip Heerwagen due to their performances in various meaningless matches (wins against two smallish swiss sides and against Trabzon). And with a name like “army-wagon”, who’s gonna stop him now?
The season began last week with the DFB cup, and we got yet another embarassing 1-0 win against some minnow, this year around it was Sportfreunde Lotte, which sounds more like an auld aunties’ bridge evening than a football club, but anyways. Mönchengladbach are visiting Bochum on Sunday at 3:30pm to kick off the season. Personally, I don’t expect to much from this season, but among the things that would make me happy are these two: With this stock of players, relegation will be an issue until the end, but can also easily be avoided well before the last week of the season, given what other contenders for the drop spots (I’m looking at you, Mainz) have. not. Second, this year could see Marcel Koller overtake the last 8 or so managers in terms of time spent at the club without being sacked, and I’d really like appreciate some continuity there. He doesn’t promise wonders like Neururer did, but he doesn’t underachieve either. Speaking of Neururer, this is 2009/10 and the year he promised some miracle or other to happen in Bochum. Well he’s been sacked six years ago, but let’s see how good a prophet he is anyway
Be sure to tune in later this weekend, now I’ve woken up again I shall post more often than these past few weeks.
Category: Team NewsOh. my. god.
By: jhb | 2 Comments
The shirts posted earlier were apparently the training outfit, used only and solely for that purpose. The true kit had to be a little more exciting than that, dontcherknow!? Read the rest of this entry »
Category: Team News
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