The rest of the goals follow:

Crappy defence on our part in the next scene:

Is it me, or does he float there for about a second before falling again:

Well, the match ended Bochum 3 1860 2, but the last goal cannot be found apparently. I can’t find it, at least.

Last, new coach Funkel gave us this gem in the post-match interview:
“I’m not going to watch the game again tonight, I’m gonna watch the highlights tomorrow on, what’s that nowadays, erm, DVD I think.”

Amateurs, eh? Apparently this was in the 91st minute of the game. Legen.. dary!

I don’t know what the team has done during the winter break, but it can’t have been all wrong. Of the 4 games so far I expected 4-6 points (definite losses against Schalke and Leverkusen, probable victory over Gladbach and Hertha). We got 6, albeit in a different order than expected. And look at that spirit: 2-0 down against Schalke – fought back, 0-1 down against unbeaten Leverkusen – fought back and got one point.

And although there wasn’t much transfer activity, getting Lewis Holtby on loan from Schalke is a great move. A very talented player, not the highest wages around, and totally enthusiastic about everything Bochum. He even lives just around the corner of to the Ruhrstadion.
Great passing, too, last saturday against Leverkusen, see here (at 2:20):

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.

After the VfL switched coaches between matchdays 10 and 11, we have seen the huge improvement of, wait, ranking one place higher in the table after another 7 matchdays!

Most of the past weeks felt extremely void in terms of footballing innovation in Bochum. Week in, week out, the same old lack of creativity on the pitch paired with players who didn’t look like they were tearing themselves apart for the club. Every match was followed by endless repetitions of “we have to work hard etcetc” press conferences, but nothing changed at all. Rather disappointing, really. I might even like Heiko Herrlich as a person, but I don’t know if he has done anything to qualify for a Bundesliga coaching job. Except getting the license, of course.

And just when you start writing off your club, the management, coach, and everything else, settling in for a sooner-than-later return to second tier football, they come back with what looks like an incredible display of willpower and turn around the last match before winter break. Being 2-0 down at half time in Hanover, our boys scored thrice in the last 45 minutes to leave with three points and some real hope to eventually reach a spot above the relegation zone. Honestly, it was entirely unexpected, even being (undeservedly!) two goals down at half time didn’t make them surrender. And there could have been more goals in the second half had it not been for Hanover’s Fromlowitz in goal.

Particularly interesting aspects of that match: again, the strikers couldn’t find the goal, with the notable exception of never-more-than-substitute Paul Freier, who scored a couple minutes after being substituted for Dedic at the beginning of the second half (Did that guy Dedic ever score for anyone before? Oh right, in that bloody World Cup bloody qualifier..).
And again, Austrian defender Christian Fuchs scored from a free kick in the dying minutes of the match. Third time in a row. I can see a pattern there, and I’m liking it! (well, in the Bayern match it was still almost 20 minutes to go, but then again it was a pointless goal anyway. I see my patterns where I want them)
Most importantly though, the last match of the first half of the season was a more beautiful, more significant, and even more successful reincarnation of the first match of the season. Three goals in 45 minutes, two quick goals within 7 minutes after the break, only one half decent striker on the pitch for us. Can we please make the first two of those our trademark? And start doing that without conceding a couple goals in the first half?

One might think ‘All’s well that ends well’, but even though the christmas finish was promising, I have serious doubts about the rest of our 2009/10 campaign. A disturbing lack of self-confidence with our strikers, a fighting spirit that only turns up for special occasions, and defense at times confused and nervous like a youth team playing with the big boys.. Guess the circle is turning into a spiral; we will be fighting relegation until the very end. My only hope lies in the Bundesliga’s recent trend to have particularly terrible relegation candidates who out-underperform one another in their battle for 18th place. You no longer have to fight for survival, you can try to go for being a bit less dreadful than three other teams.

Hm, re-reading that, it sounds a bit bleak. Let’s instead go for an optimistic new year high note: we’ll do it, simply because we have to! More often than not, the guys somehow avoid the drop anyway – we haven’t been unabsteigbar for 22 years for no reason! So here’s to winter break miracles! I mean, if half of the squad even decides to actually wake up, we’ll be practically invincible.

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 ?)