New kit?!
By: jhb |
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The new kit is currently being presented at a local store, but so far no visitors have posted their phone-camera shots yet.. The VfL homepage shows some photographs of the training camp, and if those shirts are the ones we’ll get, I’m happy:
I’ll post again when the show is done and somebody gets there pics online.
Category: Team News
Next season’s coming
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And once again the world proves to be a village. In this weekend’s drawing for the DFB cup – which like last season marks the beginning of the season, I see a pattern there.. – we’ve been drawn to play at Lotte. Yeah, plenty of knowledge at wikipedia, huh? Anyways, the world being small etc., in my brief research about Sportfreunde Lotte I found they’ve just signed the man whose unpronouncable family name was the only reason for his failure at our very club: David Czyszczon. They signed him from RW Essen, who in turn had signed him in 2007 from, well, our reserves.
In preparation for that bang of a start to the new season, the VfL has resumed training at home yesterday, missing Yahia and Hashemian (holidays because they had to play WC qualifiers), Blondie (busy warming the bench in the U21 WC in Sweden), and Pippo Bönig (some operation or other). Quietly, the management has apparently sold Marcin Mieciel, who wanted to go back to Poland and is going to play for Warsaw next year. Good luck there!
We also lost Danny Fuchs to Kaiserslautern, where he’s already spent the past 12 months on loan. Good luck to you, too.
Apart from Swedish defender Johansson, the only new players in the first week are apparently recruited from the reserves, the youngsters Luthe and Vogt (positions unknown) are given the chance to fight their way through the Bundesliga next year. Even more good luck to them!
More news: The new kit is to be revealed on wednesday, and if the rumours are any indication, it is not going to be the most exciting revelation ever…
During the summer, we’re playing the following teams in test matches:
5 July – FC Zurich
8 July – FC St. Gallen (the summer camp is in Switzerland, in case you couldn’t guess)
13 July – FC Wil (plenty of opportunity for FC-Goodwill-puns etc there)
18 July – Olympiacos FC (at home)
22 July – RW Ahlen (at Telgte
25 July – Trabzonspor Kulübü (at home, whoever they might be)
that’s it for tonight, I’ll be back on wednesday the latest with the new shirts!
Category: Team NewsWe have a signing!
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Swedish midfielder Andreas Johansson is heading our way. Can’t say that his name rings a bell. 27 years of age (though looking at his wikipedia image, I’d say ‘age undefined’), playes for Halmstads, capped once for Sweden (this January), which is a good sign (I hope). I haven’t eben seen some youtube of him, so I’ll wait with judgement for the test matches over summer.
On related news, everybody knows we’re looking for a striker. Or maybe two… And apparently some candidates are floating about, one of which is Slovene super-duper talent Etien Velikonja, 20 years, 17 goals last season. Seems to be a rising star in Slovenia, but who knows what that means. There’s also rumours linking us to Greek strikers Saltingidis and Mantsios (both from Panathinaikos). By the way, Saltingidis and Velikonja are 1.7 m “tall” – since “helicopter” Hashemian has failed to provide air dominance last season, what exatcly are we looking for this summer? Are we suddenly planning to play the ball in swift team efforts and create chances from open play instead of kicking it high and far, hoping for a lucky header, as every decent relegation team does?
Well then, let’s see who else is coming, three transfers have been announced, two still to go!
Category: Team NewsMore breaking news – we have a logo for 2011..
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For the women’s world cup, that is. The Ruhrstadion has been selected as one of the nine venues for the second world cup in Germany in the space of 5 years. For the occasion, the city and club have now produced a “composite logo”, which is basically a mash-up of the official world cup logo and something typical of each city.
For Bochum, the city part shows the headframe above the mining museum. Not that we haven’t seen it in each and every campaign the city has launched in the past 10 years.. But anyway! The logo’s beauty is in its simplicity, and the blue-and-white design is a nice optical counterweight to the coloured-and-weirdly-shaped-stadium-icon that passes as a world cup logo these days. I guess for design reason’s they’ve picked up the “dynamic” curvature there. And as far as “typical for the city” is concerned, you simply can’t beat coal mining, which is a synonym for tradition round these parts.
Here’s the pic and the original:
(thanks to wikipedia.)
Category: Team Newssummer “news”
By: jhb | 2 Comments
Not much happening at the Castroper Strasse. Rumour has it the VfL is in negotiation with the new shirt sponsor, whoever that might turn out to be. Several candidates to replace KiK (and their hideous red logo) have already turned away (Reno, and a local energy company), so it might be a very real prospect to start the season without a logo on the chest. The rumours, however, (and the only source is bild.de, so don’t believe it), say that Kassel-based MEG AG are interested in a 2.5 Mio € deal over two years. Doesn’t sound excitingly much to me, but better than zip, i guess. Plus, their colours fit ours much better than KiK:
On related news, if the pictures floating about in the interwebs are correct, our new away shirts will be profoundly ugly (see right). Now, I don’t mind to have the cheapest kit provider on the block (last season, our shirts were between 20 and 40 €), but if that means designs like that one, I know who’s not going shopping for that.
Transfer news: Cottbus wants 1.6 million for their striker Rangelov, so he’s going anywhere but coming to us. The management announced they are looking for two strikers and one midfielder, we’ll see what they’ll come up with. Probably some no-names, such as have been Sestak, Gekas, Mavraj etc in recent years. Another rumour sees danish right-back Bobbie Friberg da Cruz (what a name! Hope he’s going by the name of Bobbie on his shirt 
) heading our way, but he doesn’t seem to fit the requirements, plus the only source I’ve found is a translation based on inspired guesses from we-think-it-looks-like-swedish to german. Wouldn’t trust that too much. (link is here).
We also haven’t sold any player yet, things ar eterribly quiet around the Ruhrstadion. Let’s hope that no news is good news, and I’ll be right back for the first transfers as soon as they are coming in.
Category: Team NewsThe Season Review In High and Lowlights
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Finally, I am going to give a somewhat lengthy season recap, with more detail the longer back the events. My apologies for the length, I’m going to post a reduced version pretty soon.
Read the rest of this entry »
Category: ReviewBochumers on international duty
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Over the weekend, our Iranian striker Vahid Hashemian travelled to North Korea for a world cup qualifier. Apparently he played a little over one hour, and the match ended in a goalless draw. I didn’t follow the match, but according to USA today Hashemian missed two good chances early in the match. Still good to see our striker’s name and the words “slick football” in the same sentence. Hang on, they didn’t call it soccer. Amazing!
Goalie Fernandes is also still being nominated for the Portugal national team, though I should think he’s probably number three in their goal. In any case, his service wasn’t needed in Portugal’s 2-1 win over Albania.
On related news, midfielder Dennis Grote has been called up for the U-21s European Championship later this month. Last thursday, they won the last test match before the tournament against a small club from northern Germany 6-0.
Category: Team NewsThe 46th Bundesliga season – 10 conclusions
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Split into general and VfL-related items:
—-
Hm, that’s 9 conclusions. 9 is the new 10, now bugger off 
Category: Team NewsEventuell, eventuell
By: jhb | Add Comments
Some loose facts as we prepare for the last matchday in the Bundesliga:
Category: Team NewsMission Accomplished!
By: jhb | 3 Comments
Actually, my match preview for last weekend had the title “Let the crap continue”, but for whatever reason I never got round to posting it. Lucky me, because this weekend was pretty much the best you can hope for if your team is in serious relegation struggle: a) we won. With two goals to none, and never in any real danger. b) all direct opponents lost (save Karlsruhe, but that’s covered somewhere else. c) And how they lost! Mönchengladbach got 5 goals in Düsseldorf (read: Leverkusen), but behold! they are one goal better off now than before because d) Bielefeld aka the town that never existed lost by half a dozen goals in Dortmund! That’s Dortmund 6 Bielefeld 0! Listen and repeat: 6… 0…
A perfect Saturday, the only reason I didn’t write earlier was that I wasn’t as drunk on saturday as I felt you should be on an occasion like this. But before I don’t write at all, you get the sober version of the celebrations..
Bochum are safe and might already want to think about the summer transfer period, having as it were totally botched up last years transfers (Hashemian, one of two celebrated homecoming queens strikers, scored his first(!) this weekend, and Freier has also scored the incredible amount of a single goal over the season).
But the true reason, of course, why this actually means mission accomplished, is related to theoffside.com: I set out to save Bochum from relegation by blogging at the offside, leaving only three clubs without a representation here (that would be Karlsruhe, Cottbus, and Bielefeld), and now it turns out these three are relegation favourites this year! How’s that for a self-fulfilling prophecy I rest my case.
Which means now I can go on blogging without the pressure of my own promises. Oh wait, while I’m at it: how about next year it’s UEFA cupEuropa League time again for the VfL! As it usually is once in three years! (OK, OK, only if we manage to stay in the first flight for those three years or more in a row, which did not happen often after 1993). If I find some obvious reason for us to reach the international cups again next year as I did for relegation stop this year, I will frame next season’s entries under some general overachiever’s cliché theme.. maybe. In any case, all those fanatic Bochum fans out there (yep, I’m talking to all three of you!), let us celebrate the moment. Here’s to a season to forget!
addendum: I just got confirmation that not writing for theoffside.com indeed means instant relegation.
Category: Moments of Glory
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