We’re back, Mk. II

By: jhb | August 10th, 2009

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..

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 )