ReiseReise

Happened is the right word. I really have to say I´m disgusted with Bayern to the max. Dominating the league and winning almost every game in walkthrough fashion isn´t enough, they still get teams slipping up in the dieing minutes of the game to take three points in one of the very few games where they looked closer to defeat for a good sixty minutes. Okay, maybe not "losing", but Mainz didn´t give them anything and had the better chances up to that kick by Robben right in the 90th minute. Even for the last 30, when Bayern were applying the pressure, they didn´t really create any opportunity. Kind of feel sorry for Mainz, but in the end, it´s totally on them. They played a really good game, but passes like that one from Okazaki will mess you up against every team of the league. Well, aside from Dortmund atm, they would either miss an open goal or try to dribble the ball across the line instead of shooting.

I´m biased, no question, but seeing Neuer´s way of defending long passes which are splitting Bayern´s midfield and back line apart makes me think he should get the FIFA Golden Ball coming January. With all the hyperbole in today´s sports media, his way of goalkeeping is indeed revolutionary. There have been quite a few goalkeepers who were good footballers since the backpass rule was inserted, but I have never seen one play the position like Neuer does, not even in one game, let alone as consistant as the Bayern No.1 did. Then again, Cristiano has been really great this season aswell and won the CL in summer after scoring a bazillion goals. So I guess it is indeed my bias, since it´s not only a German but also a goalkeeper (I was one during my youth days aswell) who is among the top three.

Borussia Dortmund wins their home game against Hoffenheim in an intense opener of the Bundesliga´s 14th matchday. Their inability to score is still astonishing. Lots of good, some even great chances for Dortmund, but the scoreline was 1-0 in the end, thanks to an early Gündogan (flying) header. Early in the second half they got a goal disallowed which should have stood and I´m sure the Bundesliga officials will breath their sighes of relief after this didn´t lead to them dropping points like they did against Paderborn. Hoffenheim didn´t have their best day, they started out okay, but then looked to be out of it after about ten minutes. They weren´t able to recover after the goal and it was pretty much all Dortmund. Quick sidenote: Pierre Emerick Aubameyang is an amazing player, of course his athleticism is his trump card, but he is also really good with the ball and thinking quick on his feet.

Arsenal is playing a good game against Dortmund and the match is generally entertaining. Still a little baffled how the linesman missed Sanogo´s offside, looked to have a pretty clear view. From how the game went from then on, the lead is deserving, although a draw would have been appropriate aswell as of now. Win was deserved aswell. Arsenal was one step ahead for the most of the match, Dortmund weren´t good at defending and didn´t create much up front. Maybe that means they will start winning in the league now? Watched the last half hour of Leverkusen vs Monaco. Nothing much to write about. Monaco are an ugly side to watch, but if you win you are right. Terrible week for the German teams. Kind of glad, though, after all the UEFA-5-year-thingy-talk over the last weeks whenever the teams performed well.

Haha. Aside from the two horrible slip-ups in the end by two players who normally won´t make these kind of mistakes, this game is great at showing why nobody is beating Bayern in the domestic league. City are no slouches, they have a great set of players. They were unable, however, to control the game against Bayern who were missing many key players, the game had no particular meaning to them and they were down one man after twenty minutes aswell as one goal. This is NOT due to City being bad, I would say they took quite the fight to Bayern, but aside from the last 4-5 minutes, they were just not getting into the game the way they should have been after the goal. Kudos to City and Agüero especially who was great at taking his chances. Schalke, on the other hand, was just really really bad today from what I saw. Chelsea has been strong in BPL and if they have now found their groove in CL, they will certainly be a final four candidate, but you shouldn´t loose 0-5 at home to a side that is mostly known for being strong on the defensive end. The third goal was a prime example how they were hit by Murphy´s law today, when Santana, Höwedes and Kirchhoff bumped into each other with Kirchhoff heading into the own net.

Poor Marco Reus. Another ankle injury - extent seems to be unclear up until now - left him being carried off the pitch in Dortmund´s match at Paderborn. Adding to the injury: Dortmund threw away a 2-0 lead in the 2-2 draw. They still can at least partially blame it on the refs, who disallowed a goal that easily should have standed when the result was 2-1. Right after that situation Paderborn pushed up the field and scored for the point. Gladbach, after being unbeaten for a while, lost their home game to Frankfurt after being up 1-0. Bayern beat Hoffenheim by 4-0 and should be able to win the league in cruise control right now. There is nobody to really trouble them and I really don´t see nearly enough match ups anymore to trouble them. They´ll maybe drop a few points here and there, but they are just too strong. Even with their fullbacks being badly injured, they are able to control matches and they basically keep their opponents from creating enough clear cut chances. If some opportunity drops the opposing teams way, there is still an extraordinary goalkeeper between the sticks. Wolfsburg ended their winning streak losing at Schalke in a very weird game. DiMatteo´s team went up 3-0 and everything seemed to work pretty well, but after 30 minutes the game suddenly changed and Schalke wasn´t able to switch the flip back to on. Wolfsburg was able to pull one back before half-time, then reduced the deficit. Even with quite a few chances at the end they couldn´t get the equalizer, though. Sunday will have the Northern German derby between Hamburger SV and Werder Bremen which in this year is a battle for points against relegation. It will probably be very heated, but I´m not really sure if it will be fun to watch. Both clubs have had quite limited quality over the last few years.

Germany beat Spain in Vigo in the battle of the second stringers after a goalkeeping mistake by the subbed on Casilla (no typo there). Germany showed some good defending, especially the back line and the midfield-fullbacks looked quite decent. Kroos and Khedira - oddly enough being veterans - had somewhat weaker games, especially Kroos gave the ball away far too often. It´s the first victory for Germany over Spain in fourteen years and the first away victory for Spain since the 1982 World Cup. This also concludes the international season for Germany. The FIFA ethics commission thing is beyond belief. Incredible farce. But, to be honest, I don´t feel like anyone of us here expected anything else. FIFA is always acting like they were looking into things, analizing etc., just so they can ultimately flip the bird in everyone´s faces. And football fans like us, admitted, are stupid enough to watch the stuff anyway. The only way I can see myself NOT watching the World Cup´s 2018 and 2022 is if teams actually really start boycotting those tournaments.

Definetly not alone on that one. I´m not sure if it is due to his playing style, form or a bit of both, but Kagawa looks like he is not yet really a part of the midfield. He looked like he hadn´t missed a beat in his first match back, but yesterday, while playing alright, he was the weakest of the midfielders. Same goes for the good BVB-performances in the Champions League matches. It will be interesting to see if Dortmund will get their act together in the Bundesliga right now.

Dortmund finally broke their duck today. After a handful of good chances, they scored thanks to... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMls5_-FKmk Christoph Kramer. Greatest own goal I personally saw in a live match. Dortmund dominanted the game and deserved the win, but what ultimately got them three points was lady luck. Something they´d been missing in a lot of games this season. After Gladbach´s first loss, Wolfsburg takes the title of reigning "Bayern hunters". The team beat the Hamburger SV at home two goals to nothing. Bremen and Freiburg, who only recently won their first match this season, managed to get their second W right away with 2-0 victories at home. Bremen beat Stuttgart, Freiburg downed Schalke. Bayern aren´t slipping up so far. They won 4-0 at Frankfurt, being really effective for the first two thirds of the match, then picking Frankfurt apart in the latter stages.

It´s so weird considering Dortmund played two quite decent campaigns in the Champion´s League aswell lately. That and every bigger league having dominant periods of single teams again and again since I followed football. At least Italy, France, Germany, England and Spain all had.

Man City is having a really underwhelming Champion´s League season so far, it seems. They may me lucky that Bayern can sit back and relax, which - in recent history - led to one or two losses against the Citizens. They really need to win in Rome to go anywhere though, I´d say. Schalke continues to be off, only this time their mistakes were too many and the ref didn´t bail them out. Didn´t expect them to be the German team with the biggest troubles on qualifying, to be honest, All other groups seemed harder for the German teams. Dortmund and Bayern have been machines, Leverkusen was able to throw in everything they had but Schalke was really lackluster. Messi scoring twice to tie Raul´s record is a great moment. Cristiano Ronaldo is very close to the record aswell. Two amazing individual players we have right now. I loved how the Fox mutlicast praised Eden Hazard´s technique from the penalty spot followed up by Hazard taking one of the weakest penalties I have seen all season. No power, not well placed and not able to lure the GK into one of the other corners almost automatically makes you look like a jackass from the spot, I guess. Luiz Adriano scoring eight goals in total against BATE is quite something aswell.

Dortmund beat Galatasaray at home, 4-1. Some Gala-"fans" not only lit fireworks (which sparks overreactions most of the time, forbidden or not), but in an attempt to disrupt Dortmund´s fairly controlled game first shot said fireworks onto the pitch and later into the pro-Dortmund parts of the crowd. Here you have the reason why clubs get fined and pyro in the stadiums get frowned upon. Arsenal´s 3-3 after a 3-0 lead is really surprising, but Anderlecht hasn´t really been as bad as their results suggested so far. Still, Arsenal is in a pretty great position to qualify for the knockout stages. Leverkusen was the other German club to play today, and after a close 2-1 win at Zenit they have a pretty good shot of not only making the round of the last 16, but also of winning their group. One win in one of their remaining games (Monaco at home next, then Benfica away) will do so. Behind them, the other three teams are very close to each other. Real seems to have won their group, Liverpool is struggling mightily and can´t afford any slip ups now. Atletico seems to have recovered, Malmö can still be the team to profit from Juve and Olimpiakos only looking out for each other (hey, a Swede-at-heart can dream, right?).

Missed basically all of the Bundesliga matchday because of family events. Saw the highlights of Bayern vs Dortmund and I really think that Bayern´s game winning penalty didn´t have to be given (Subotic holding Ribery, who in turn pushes Subotic) and much less given away (weird pinfall deflection and IF Subotic feels he needs to foul he should do so earlier). Dortmund however really are riding a wave of bad luck in the Bundesliga. Hummels´ injury leading to Subotic getting subbed on, Subotic following up taking unfortunate part in both Bayern goals. The crisis of Klopp´s team is more a crisis of results than a crisis of play itself, but in the end, results ultimately are what matters in football. I think Dortmund failed to shut out the opposition all season while being on a 16:1- goal differential in cups. 18:1 if you want to count the German Super cup. Kind of crazy in my opinion. Gladbach continues to be on fire, beating fellow top team Hoffenheim at home by 3-1 and taking second place. They continue being down four points to Bayern and will play in Dortmund next Sunday. Bayern play in Frankfurt. At the bottom of the table, winless Bremen and Freiburg both got their first victories of this season. Werder winning in Mainz, Freiburg in Cologne. Hamburg won their home match against Leverkusen who are continuing to lack consistency this season despite showing some really good potential.

German cup saw no major surprises (neither of the teams with decent chances to win it - on paper - got eliminated), yet once more top flight teams fell prey to lower league clubs (Hannover and Hertha BSC Berlin got eliminated). Leverkusen was very close to being the major upset of this round facing Magdeburg (fourth division and therefore basically just outside the national league system), equalizing a deficit in overtime and later going through in PKs after being down by two missed kicks at one point. Next round Bayern got the luck of draw, facing 2. Bundesliga Braunschweig at home, Dortmund plays in Dresden (where local rivals Schalke were eliminated in the first round) and Leverkusen gets Kaiserslautern at home in a repeat of last year´s quarterfinal (which Kaiserslautern one in extra time). Bundesliga matchday is upon us aswell, Bayern will play Dortmund Saturday evening. Might very well be the last chance for Dortmund to salvage this season. Bayern has been pretty much cruising up on top, some teams are still in striking distance, but some of them are unlikely to play as consistantly as Bayern do tbh.

Wow, shittey noscript screwing over my post... Anyway... Dortmund simply isn´t there yet. They lost key players over and over, some came back, some are gone for good. Lewandowski is the last big loss. Not only is he the best striker the Bundesliga had, he is the one that fit into Klopp´s system best. The replacements they built up during the last seasons like Hofmann and Schieber where the same player-types, albeit far from the same level. Ramos and Immobile are not only different types of players, they haven´t - so far - played a consecutive run of matches together, since basically all the creative midfielders were either injured (Reus, Mhkitariyan) or joined the squad after pre-season (Kagawa). It takes time for them to grow together and thanks to the World Cup and lots of their players participating they didn´t have the time to do so over the summer. Bayern squad replaced a great striker with another great striker and is basically playing the same system like last season with pretty much the same squad outside of Lewandowski. Gladbach drew Bayern goallessly in a thrilling game. Both teams were tactically sound, both goalkeepers with some great saves. Bayern played the posession game, Gladbach was defending it well and hit the Bundesliga-leaders dangerously on the break. Great counter-attacking. Neuer saved Bayern on a few occassions, especially in the second half. There were also some tricky situations inside the penalty boxes, Benatia elbowed Traoré very close to the final whistle while Stranzl brought Götze of balance with a tackle that proved to be perfectly timed in slow motion. Good game. Bayern defends the lead and continues to be four points ahead of Gladbach who are tied with Wolfsburg (ended Mainz´ unbeaten run with a 3-0 win today) and Hoffenheim (who are third team besides Bayern and Gladbach to remain unbeaten after nine games played). Hoffenheim will play Gladbach at home on matchday 10.

Maybe I was overrating the class of Dortmund´s players, although from what I´ve seen this season it´s more likely I overrated their consistency. Against Hannover they had three or four good opportunities to score, then conceeded from a free kick and seemed genuinly stunned afterwards, not being able to get back into it once more. Really didn´t expect their season to go awry like it did. Leverkusen beat Schalke, who once again didn´t really happen offensively, by a single, but really good goal from a Calhanoglu free kick and kept up with the top group. The real crazy game of this matchday so far however was Frankfurt vs Stuttgart, which went from 1-0 for the home team to 1-3 Stuttgart to 4-3 Frankfurt to 4-5 away win. Next level crazy. Today sees Wolfsburg vs Mainz and the afromentioned top match between Moenchengladbach and Bayern. Bayern will probably win and pull away. They have been unstoppable over the last two seasons and gave away nothing. Next week they got Dortmund at home, which is going to be interesting with the BVB coming in as big underdogs. Maybe they will be able to switch to Champions League mode.

I think the reason why the Euro-League gets the knock is that it´s quite clearly cut out to play second fiddle to the Champions League. It starts out with the teams that missed out on "the big one", and later on teams who couldn´t make it to the Champions League knockout stages get to join in in the round of the last 32. Loved the old UEFA cup, but after the group stage and the first knockout-games I can´t stand to watch Euro-League. So, the BPL has Chelsea vs Man U, Bundesliga has Gladbach vs. Bayern, Ligue 1 has PSG vs Girodins aswell as Lyon vs Marseille and last but not least we have El Clasico in BBVA. Incredible weekend. Serie A has second and third squaring off aswell, as Roma plays Sampdoria at home, so basically every league of the big five has at least one major match up with traditional top flight teams. Incredible.

Congratulations, Dewar. Never stop believing, I´d say.

Dortmund has been on fire in the Champions League tbh, and what they showed 20 minutes in so far looks like the Dortmund that was successful for the last 4 years. Schalke´s penalty, despite me wishing I could say something else, was a joke and I can´t blame anyone for shaking his/her head at it. Schalke didn´t look good, but getting the win was much needed. I´d say so far they are only one point behind what they´d hoped for, since the draw at Chelsea was kind of a bonus. Now they have to get results in their away games. Bayern on the other hand was off the charts yesterday, although Roma crumbled right from the get-go.

Meanwhile, Schalke throws away a two-goal-lead with a one-man-advantage. And Adriano scores 5 goals for Donezk against BATE.

Really surprising, considering how good Roma had looked so far. Since the Citizens threw away a good lead, Bayern basically only need 1 point to qualify for the last 16, four points should be enough to win the group almost, depending who they get those from. Schalke, from what I saw in the Simulcast, looks as dull and uninspired as they had looked under Keller against Maribor, but it´s kind of unrealistic to imagine them being improved in the blink of an eye. They just now took the lead, but that´s what you´d imagine when they play a team one man down. If Matteo is the answer to their problems will take some time to decide tbh. Chelsea and Donezk are both cruising to victory. Day of the blowouts it seems.

Agree with grizzle, Bundesliga had another entertaining matchday. The problem this season is the result. None of the teams which can be considered serious contenders outside of Bayern constantly wins matches. I fear it will be another season where all is done and dusted in March or maybe early April. Seems as if the days where a few teams were capable of winning the league are over. Dortmund might have had a majority of players back, but a lot of them are not at the level they can be. Bayern just looks unstoppable, albeit Bremen has been a lower level club since about 3 years. A shame, they used to be really good for quite a few years. Hamburg seems to be catching form as of now, though they played another draw today, they looked to be on form. Convincing performance, especially Lasogga who looked dangerous when a pass got into his direction at the front. Outside of the dominant Bayern team, Gladbach seems to be the club of the hour, 16 points and still unbeatenm a good win in Hannover, they might be up for another good season.

Not quite of the same opinion. He scored a tremendous goal, had one or two good moments, but especially in crunch time - also on some other occasions - he gave the ball away far too easily. I think, pretty much every player seemed to be below his paritcular "normal" level, which isn´t to say Ireland would have been tough to break down with all of our players being on form.

Honestly saw the Irish equalizer coming, our team was defending cowardly instead of playing when there were chances for breaks and such. Low engery, yadda yadda, Ireland had worked as hard as we had all game and were under constant pressur. It is ridiculous how this German team failed to do what Ireland was able to do for about 70 minutes against a side that was virtually awful in front of goal. I guess we really need quite a few players back for this qualifying campaign to become a success. Maybe it was arrogance and/or false belief in our second and third stringers, but I really didn´t think we would conceedr against all three of our opponents in the first three qualifying games.

Somehow Ozil will be blamed. Well, he didn´t contribute at all to be honest. Half-Time of today´s matches and Iceland are leading the Dutch 2-0. Shit is going down in European international football right now. EDIT: And it stayed at 2-0. Great night for Icelandic football I´d reckon.