The worst each league has to offer Pt. 2
First, I apologize for the long delay between posts.
Anyway, after looking at the worst the Bundesliga and Premierleague has to offer fan- wise, on to the next part...as always not to be taken quite seriously...
The Serie A whiner
The Serie A whiner is characterized by the need to complain. About everything. How unfair it is that the Europaleague accounts for an equal amount of Coefficient points as does the Championsleague (despite these rules being in place for years). How this disadvantages Italian clubs because they can't be bothered to take this "loser" competition seriously as oppossed to their German and Spanish counterparts. How Platini should immediatly reform this, it is all a giant UEFA conspiracy against Italy anyway ( though interestingly all fans always seem to think that their league is singled out for discrimination by UEFA for the most spurious of reasons). How everybody in the International press only focusses on the negatives of Italian football (match- fixing, diving, empty stadia, violence and racism). Though I concede they may have a legitimate gripe with the last point. But the reason for the malaise is always attributed to external factors instead of engaging in a bit of self- reflection
The La Liga Purist
The La Liga purist sneers at teams that don't play a certain style of football. God beware that someone plays a bit of a more physical game, as characterized in its most pure form by Stoke, or that a referee takes a more lenient line towards tackling and the use of physical tools in a game, the poor sod will be torn apart by fans and press afterwards. The really grating thing is that the non- physical, passing game (as embodied by the admittedly brilliant Barcelona) is elevated to a position of religion, no alternative styles accepted. It is not the preference for one style of football over the other that is so irritating, it is the negation that it is especially the difference between the different ways of playing football that actually make the beautifull game "beautifull".
The MLS Inferiority Complex
I read a lot of US- American and Canadian soccer blogs, and one thing noticable is a bloody irritating inferiority complex MLS fans struggle with. Yes, it is a relatively young league, and football is not the major sport in the USA or Canada, but this is no reason to go into deep bouts of navel- gazing, including the tedious topic of whether you call it "soccer" or "football", what everybody will think about MLS, David Beckham, etc. Or conversely go the other way complaining about "Eurosnobs" and see insults and condescendation whenever there are reports about the MLS in the non- American press. Just relax.
Anyway, that is all for now.
Freitag, 30. November 2012
Samstag, 26. Mai 2012
The worst each league has to offer
Inspired in equal parts by a conversation on twitter, Dietmar Wischmayer and my sociology studies:
Each league has great fans, and it is the fooball fans that make that sport such an unforgettable experience. However, each league also has the fans that irritate the heck out of other fans. So, without further ado, here is my sociological break- down of the worst the Bundesliga and the Premier League has to offer.
The Bundesliga- Besserwisser: Since it is good form to start with your own league first, I give you the Bundesliga- Besserwisser. The direct translation of the beautiful German word "Besserwisser" is "better- knower", i.e. a know- it- all. In my opinion that describes the typical worst Bundesliga fan very well. He or she has an opinion on everything, even if it is not always supported by fact and can easily preach on the debts of La Liga clubs, matchfixing and empty stadia in Serie A, oligarchs and sheiks in the PL, etc and so on while at the same time going on about the great fans and fiscal sanitiy in the Bundesliga (even if this does not correspond with reality). This way, the Besserwisser does not try to talk up the Bundesliga but to put down the other leagues, thus making the Bundesliga the best league in Europe by default.
If I am honest with myself (and as a scholar of Platon I strife towards selfknowledge above else ;)), I find myself slipping into this Besserwisser mode from time to time. When Atletico Madrid won the Europaleague, I couldn't help snidely mentioning that they apparently have 150 Million Euro of outstanding tax not payed yet...
The PL- Fanboy: Next, there is the Premier League Fanboy. This species of fan can be identified that for him, the PL is everything and nothing exists apart from it. Other players and coaches are only discussed in terms of which PL team could use and sign them, even when there is NO indication that said player or coach has any interest coming to the PL. See Henry Winter commenting that Schweinsteiger would do well at Manchester United, or the way that Arsenal fans and the medie seem to be trying to offload Nikolas Bendtner on Dortmund, and want Kagawa in exchange (something that I find particularly galling as a Dortmund fan, we don't want or need the guy!). Aditionally, clubs that perform well against English clubs become the flavour of the month (Athletic Bilbao, Basel shortly before they were taken apart by Bayern Munich.
Each league has great fans, and it is the fooball fans that make that sport such an unforgettable experience. However, each league also has the fans that irritate the heck out of other fans. So, without further ado, here is my sociological break- down of the worst the Bundesliga and the Premier League has to offer.
The Bundesliga- Besserwisser: Since it is good form to start with your own league first, I give you the Bundesliga- Besserwisser. The direct translation of the beautiful German word "Besserwisser" is "better- knower", i.e. a know- it- all. In my opinion that describes the typical worst Bundesliga fan very well. He or she has an opinion on everything, even if it is not always supported by fact and can easily preach on the debts of La Liga clubs, matchfixing and empty stadia in Serie A, oligarchs and sheiks in the PL, etc and so on while at the same time going on about the great fans and fiscal sanitiy in the Bundesliga (even if this does not correspond with reality). This way, the Besserwisser does not try to talk up the Bundesliga but to put down the other leagues, thus making the Bundesliga the best league in Europe by default.
If I am honest with myself (and as a scholar of Platon I strife towards selfknowledge above else ;)), I find myself slipping into this Besserwisser mode from time to time. When Atletico Madrid won the Europaleague, I couldn't help snidely mentioning that they apparently have 150 Million Euro of outstanding tax not payed yet...
The PL- Fanboy: Next, there is the Premier League Fanboy. This species of fan can be identified that for him, the PL is everything and nothing exists apart from it. Other players and coaches are only discussed in terms of which PL team could use and sign them, even when there is NO indication that said player or coach has any interest coming to the PL. See Henry Winter commenting that Schweinsteiger would do well at Manchester United, or the way that Arsenal fans and the medie seem to be trying to offload Nikolas Bendtner on Dortmund, and want Kagawa in exchange (something that I find particularly galling as a Dortmund fan, we don't want or need the guy!). Aditionally, clubs that perform well against English clubs become the flavour of the month (Athletic Bilbao, Basel shortly before they were taken apart by Bayern Munich.
Mittwoch, 9. Mai 2012
Dortmund and the difficult next step
So then, the second Bundesliga title has been bagged for Dortmund, and with reaching the final of the DFB- Pokal against Bayern, I think it's fair to say that it has been a more than successfull domestic season for Dortmund. Additionally, Dortmund finished the season with a whopping 81 points and played some really lovely football to boot at well.
This is in oppossition to our showings in Europe though, where we came fourth in a group containing Arsenal (in crisis at the time), Marseille (who generally were not that impressive) and Olympiakos Piräus (not very impressive either). I must admit that I was disappointed and emberassed by our weak showing. The early exit from the European competitions probably helped our league form, which really picked up after the winter break, i.e. when we were out of all European competitions. The question is, what does Dortmund do to reach that next step, the ability to compete on both the domestic and the European front, to represent the Bundesliga befitting of a German champion and to push into that circle of truly elite teams?
The first point, imho, is: experience. It was noticable, the way that our defense for example, that hardly set a foot wrong during the whole season (apart from one crazy 4-4 against Stuttgart perhaps) looked like Kreisklasse players on the international parquett. The way that Hummels was letting himself being duped by the Marseille strikers had my jaw dropping at times. Hopefully this will be better as our young key players continue to amass valuable experience, also with their national teams.
This leads me to point two: Keep the stars. We sold Nuri Sahin last season to go and sit in the stands at Real Madrid and struggled the first half of the season, especially since poor Sven Bender picked up one facial injury after the other and Ilkay Gündogan took until the second half of the season to really get going. Now, Barrios is already gone chasing the big bucks in China, which makes it imperative that we at least keep Lewandowski. He still has contract until 2014, and Watzke has already come out and pretty much said that he wont be sold. Kagawa however is a different story. Only one year left on the contract and with rumoured interest from big clubs from England. If the offer is right, he might well be off.
One of the problems is the wage structure. Dortmund so far have got by with paying roughly between 40 to 50 million Euro in wages annually. However, the truly big football clubs pay in excess of a 100 million Euro (even including such nominally financially moderate clubs such as Arsenal). Dortmund has already used the contract of extensions of players such as Götze to increase their salary, but the question of course is, how far can the club go? Especially since the spector of the 2005 near- insolvency still looms large. One positive sign is that the financial development continues to be very good, and Dortmund has managed to sign better sponsorship deals thanks to our success on the domestic level.
Well then, the next European season is certainly going to be interesting.
This is in oppossition to our showings in Europe though, where we came fourth in a group containing Arsenal (in crisis at the time), Marseille (who generally were not that impressive) and Olympiakos Piräus (not very impressive either). I must admit that I was disappointed and emberassed by our weak showing. The early exit from the European competitions probably helped our league form, which really picked up after the winter break, i.e. when we were out of all European competitions. The question is, what does Dortmund do to reach that next step, the ability to compete on both the domestic and the European front, to represent the Bundesliga befitting of a German champion and to push into that circle of truly elite teams?
The first point, imho, is: experience. It was noticable, the way that our defense for example, that hardly set a foot wrong during the whole season (apart from one crazy 4-4 against Stuttgart perhaps) looked like Kreisklasse players on the international parquett. The way that Hummels was letting himself being duped by the Marseille strikers had my jaw dropping at times. Hopefully this will be better as our young key players continue to amass valuable experience, also with their national teams.
This leads me to point two: Keep the stars. We sold Nuri Sahin last season to go and sit in the stands at Real Madrid and struggled the first half of the season, especially since poor Sven Bender picked up one facial injury after the other and Ilkay Gündogan took until the second half of the season to really get going. Now, Barrios is already gone chasing the big bucks in China, which makes it imperative that we at least keep Lewandowski. He still has contract until 2014, and Watzke has already come out and pretty much said that he wont be sold. Kagawa however is a different story. Only one year left on the contract and with rumoured interest from big clubs from England. If the offer is right, he might well be off.
One of the problems is the wage structure. Dortmund so far have got by with paying roughly between 40 to 50 million Euro in wages annually. However, the truly big football clubs pay in excess of a 100 million Euro (even including such nominally financially moderate clubs such as Arsenal). Dortmund has already used the contract of extensions of players such as Götze to increase their salary, but the question of course is, how far can the club go? Especially since the spector of the 2005 near- insolvency still looms large. One positive sign is that the financial development continues to be very good, and Dortmund has managed to sign better sponsorship deals thanks to our success on the domestic level.
Well then, the next European season is certainly going to be interesting.
Freitag, 27. April 2012
Confessions of a UEFA Coefficient Junkie
Ah yes, the UEFA Coefficients. Let me come straight out and say it: I am an UEFA- Coefficient Junkie, or Jünger (deciple) as I have heard it referred to on the internet.
For the Uninitiated: the UEFA Coefficients (or the UEFA- Fünfjahreswertung in German) is the way that UEFA regulates how many teams each member country sends to its competitions, i.e. the Champions League and the Europaleague. The method is thus: Every win by one of the teams in your league playing in European competitions gets you 2 points, a draw 1 and a loss logically 0 points. All the points are divided by the number of teams your league sends into Europe. The statistics are collated for 5 years, updated at the end of every season. Europaleague and Champions League wins count the same, though there are bonus points for reaching both the groupstages and the knock- out rounds in the Champions League.
Example: Bayern Munich vs Real Madrid. Bayern win the game 2-1. So, two points for a win, divided by six, which is the number of teams that the Bundesliga had participating in Europe in the 2011/2012 season. All too briefly in the case of Dortmund :(. But that is a topic for a whole other post on its own.
My fandom stated in 2008, I actually don't remember what the concrete event was. I came across a mention of the Coefficients and thought: This looks interesting. So I decided to do what every person nowadays does: ask Google. Google gave me http://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/ , run by a Dutch blogger and statistics lover, in English, Mr. Bert Kassies. One klick, and it was love at first site for me. I was hooked. I was sinking, being pulled ever deeper into the maze of numbers, the ups and downs of coutries I did not even care about. But I could not resist. Who would win the 15th spot? Why did Romania first race up the table, only to plunge down again even faster? Through the Coefficients I started caring more about the UEFA- Cup/the Europaleague. And not just the groupstages, but all the pre-qualifying rounds too. The statistics fascinated me, and I'm not even a numbers person. Aditionally learned more about leagues and clubs outside the traditional big four or five.
It also helped, that around that time there were first signs of a Bundesliga recovery, who had posted an annus horribilis in 2003/04, when not a single German team had managed to reach the knock- out rounds of the UEFA competitions. However, by 2008 some clever people were noticing that the Bundesliga was staging a come- back and might even be able to overtake the Serie A in third spot, the last spot that gives you three Champions League teams. That slow overtaking manouver, which was only complete after 2010/2011 was utterly fascinating to watch, provided much discussion and often left me chewing my fingernails when German clubs were playing in Europe.
Now that Germany has pretty much secured the third place with the distance to Serie A now being more than 15 points, a huge gap by coefficient standards, I am more relaxed in my fandom. I still follow the ups (Portugal) and downs (Scotland) keenly and probably will continue to do so since I know few things less fascinating than the UEFA- Coefficients in European football.
All that is left for the Bundesliga Clubs is to actually win a title again...preferably sometime soon.
For the Uninitiated: the UEFA Coefficients (or the UEFA- Fünfjahreswertung in German) is the way that UEFA regulates how many teams each member country sends to its competitions, i.e. the Champions League and the Europaleague. The method is thus: Every win by one of the teams in your league playing in European competitions gets you 2 points, a draw 1 and a loss logically 0 points. All the points are divided by the number of teams your league sends into Europe. The statistics are collated for 5 years, updated at the end of every season. Europaleague and Champions League wins count the same, though there are bonus points for reaching both the groupstages and the knock- out rounds in the Champions League.
Example: Bayern Munich vs Real Madrid. Bayern win the game 2-1. So, two points for a win, divided by six, which is the number of teams that the Bundesliga had participating in Europe in the 2011/2012 season. All too briefly in the case of Dortmund :(. But that is a topic for a whole other post on its own.
My fandom stated in 2008, I actually don't remember what the concrete event was. I came across a mention of the Coefficients and thought: This looks interesting. So I decided to do what every person nowadays does: ask Google. Google gave me http://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/ , run by a Dutch blogger and statistics lover, in English, Mr. Bert Kassies. One klick, and it was love at first site for me. I was hooked. I was sinking, being pulled ever deeper into the maze of numbers, the ups and downs of coutries I did not even care about. But I could not resist. Who would win the 15th spot? Why did Romania first race up the table, only to plunge down again even faster? Through the Coefficients I started caring more about the UEFA- Cup/the Europaleague. And not just the groupstages, but all the pre-qualifying rounds too. The statistics fascinated me, and I'm not even a numbers person. Aditionally learned more about leagues and clubs outside the traditional big four or five.
It also helped, that around that time there were first signs of a Bundesliga recovery, who had posted an annus horribilis in 2003/04, when not a single German team had managed to reach the knock- out rounds of the UEFA competitions. However, by 2008 some clever people were noticing that the Bundesliga was staging a come- back and might even be able to overtake the Serie A in third spot, the last spot that gives you three Champions League teams. That slow overtaking manouver, which was only complete after 2010/2011 was utterly fascinating to watch, provided much discussion and often left me chewing my fingernails when German clubs were playing in Europe.
Now that Germany has pretty much secured the third place with the distance to Serie A now being more than 15 points, a huge gap by coefficient standards, I am more relaxed in my fandom. I still follow the ups (Portugal) and downs (Scotland) keenly and probably will continue to do so since I know few things less fascinating than the UEFA- Coefficients in European football.
All that is left for the Bundesliga Clubs is to actually win a title again...preferably sometime soon.
Mittwoch, 25. April 2012
Hallo and Herzlich Willkommen
Hello and welcome to my new blog. So, in typical efficient German manner, lets get this baby started:
1. What will this blog be about?
Mostly football. I'm mostly a BVB fan, and even used to blog about them for The Offside. I am however interested in a lot of other stuff too: international football, womens football, footbal in other countries, other sports. One thing I disliked about the Offside blog was that it was so restrictive in the topics, now I can ramble on about football as I please...
I'm also greatly intrested in both the economics and the politics behind football. Just don't expect 1000 word abstracts about tactics from me...
2. What language will the blog be in?
Some English, some German, mostly Denglish.
3. Who are you?
Short bio: Student, Bavaria, Football Fan
So then, to a good and productive blogship...
1. What will this blog be about?
Mostly football. I'm mostly a BVB fan, and even used to blog about them for The Offside. I am however interested in a lot of other stuff too: international football, womens football, footbal in other countries, other sports. One thing I disliked about the Offside blog was that it was so restrictive in the topics, now I can ramble on about football as I please...
I'm also greatly intrested in both the economics and the politics behind football. Just don't expect 1000 word abstracts about tactics from me...
2. What language will the blog be in?
Some English, some German, mostly Denglish.
3. Who are you?
Short bio: Student, Bavaria, Football Fan
So then, to a good and productive blogship...
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