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..

our new coach

Herrlich was already appointed as Germany’s Under-19s national team (a post he inherited from the uber-successful Horst Hrubesch) in order to lead a generation to success which he already new from two years age, when he led then seventeen year-olds to a third place in the world cup. In any case, he has accepted Bochum’s offer now, and put aside national duty for the moment. The whole appointment is interesting in several aspects: Herrlich’s name wasn’t mentioned at all in the rumour columns until about yesterday. Plus, the official statement explicitly stresses the chance to use his experience with youth teams to closely link the Bochum youth teams with the first team – which I believe is the way to go for the club, and should have been for quite a while. Maybe, finally, they have understood that there is more substance in strengthening your own youth instead of buying 35 year old half-successful strikers (I am looking at you, Diego Klimowicz – though I must admit he isn’t any worse than the rest this season). And it comes much cheaper, too.

Some words about the new coach: from his playing days at Borussias Dortmund and Mönchengladbach I recall Herrlich as a personable chap who came across as modest and intelligent. During his career with Dortmund, for a while it looked like he was filling the “score-great-headers-in-important-matches” role Riedle had invented before him. However, in 2000, a brain tumor threatened to end his career too early. He fought the cancer, and after about one year of therapy he was recovered and re-started his career with Dortmund – who, if I am not mistaken, kept his contract during this phase. He returned to professional football in 2001, and continued to play until 2004, although he never again reached the height of his game.
Arguably his most famous moment was getting attacked by Olli Kahn in a rather ugly match between Dortmund and Bayern in 1999 (see below). The media said that Kahn bit Herrlich, but looking at the photograph “affection” seems the close cousin of “aggression”, doesn’t it?

Woof, woof!

One last word on this story: only this sunday, an anonymous bloke dropped some information on a radio and TV show that Jörn Andersen was definitely going to the next Bochum coach, and it would most likely be announced on Tuesday. Well, 50% correct. Close, but no cigar, I’d say.

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 ?)

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)

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.)

But hang on a minute, I thought, it’s already so far down that depression can’t possibly get worse, and the day is wasted anyway, so look at the positive side: it can only get up from here. So I switched the match on, and look what the players found in their tea: dunno what Marcel Koller actually told them during the break, but it turned out all that lack of taking part in the match was ingenious tactics to lull the opposition who might even think that a couple of goals put you on the safe side! Hah! Tactical mastermind Koller told the players to rest 45 minutes, just to return to the pitch and totally run over the poor Gladbach boys. Within 6 minutes, Azouagh had three clear chances, the clearest of which was somehow deflected by Borussia goalie Heimeroth, but the other two were hitting the back of the net as sure as suicidal tuna in sight of a trawler. Come to think of it, only 48 seconds between the goals might well earn him some kind of Bundesliga record, who knows. With 52 minutes gone, it was 2-3 against a stunned guest 11 who found it was now their turn to quietly wait 45 minutes without much action of their own. Another five minutes later someone got sent off for hindering the third Bochum goal, and another 2 minutes later the inevitable happened with Sestak finishing with a beautiful header and some luck.

That was that, then, and Bochum made some headlines of the day. Not a usual sight, and if previous experience tells me anything, this could quite well be the highlight of the season altogether right there. But none such negative talk now, this is supposed to be a happy occasion (and a happy blogger I am today). For those of you who speak German please read this excellent season preview (Even if you don’t know German: it has the words ‘Meister’ and ‘Bochum’ next to each other so it must be good )

Plus, we got drawn against Schalke at home in the Cup, which is just great.

See the goals below (thanks to 101greatgoals):

Azouagh 1-3

Azouagh 2-3

Sestak 3-3

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.