Hi there everybody. Now that we’ve had enough time to digest the weekend’s results in Germany (and England, where Tottenham Hotspur finally got their first points on the board this season), I’m going to discuss, analyse and inform you as to how the Bundesliga is shaping up.
This blog’s featured game is the north German derby which took place at the Weserstadion on Saturday evening. It finished Werder Bremen 2-0 Hamburg. I’ve decided to mention this game in detail as these are two teams which football fans in England will know a little about. Werder Bremen won’t be an unknown entity to fans of the aforementioned Tottenham Hotspur, since the teams met in the group stages of last season’s Champions League. Players such as Claudio Pizarro once tormented defences of the Premier League (well, Birmingham City at least), while Arsenal fans might be interested to know how the previous employers of Tony Adams-inspired Per Mertesacker might be getting on without their 6’7” defender. All you need to know about Hamburg right now is that they’re bang in trouble after a run of poor results, and Sporting Director Frank Arnesen (formerly of Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea) looks like his head might be the first to roll, just as soon as the sword has fallen on a defeated-looking manager Michael Oennig. Arnesen’s policy of putting the club’s faith in half of Chelsea’s academy, and Michael Mancienne, has gone rather awry.
As two of the nation’s best-supported clubs, and with only sixty-odd miles of autobahn between the cities, these two clubs share an impassioned rivalry. People may remember the conclusion of the 2008-09 season, when Hamburg, then managed by current Fulham boss Martin Jol, were twice beaten semi-finalists at the hands of their age-old rivals. They first lost to a Diego-inspired Bremen in the German Cup and then, two weeks later, in the UEFA Cup, the last season before it was rebranded as the Europa League. Last season this fixture was a close-run affair which saw Bremen come out 3-2 winners, while Hamburg won the return fixture 4-0.
The form table going into this game didn’t look good for Hamburg at all. The club had had the entire international break to reflect on its worst ever start to a Bundesliga season, and on an awful defeat at home to Köln. Leading 3-2 with ten minutes to go, an equaliser for Köln followed by a late blunder from HSV keeper Jaroslav Drobny gifted Stale Solbakken’s side, themselves struggling near the foot of the table, a 3-4 win in the Veltins Arena. Bremen, on the other hand, were one of the form teams in the league with three wins from four. The only points they had dropped were away at Leverkusen where they lost 1-0 to an injury-time winner from Michal Kadlec, and in their last fixture they had ground out a gritty 2-1 win away to Hoffenheim. Their confidence levels, by contrast, were high.
The match itself was a typical derby game, with chances a plenty for both sides and a total of eight yellow cards issued by referee Manuel Gräfe. After an even first half, that wily old fox in the box Claudio Pizarro produced the quality needed to break the deadlock. Doing what he evidently found he found so difficult in the Premier League, but does so well in the Bundesliga, Bremen’s Peruvian striker first netted after 52 minutes, and then made the game safe with his second goal 12 minutes from time. Last October, Pizarro overtook former Stuttgart and Bayern Munich striker Giovane Elber as the Bundesliga’s leading foreign goalscorer, and has now amassed a staggering 145 goals in 308 Bundesliga appearances for Bremen and Bayern Munich.
While the result was immensely pleasing to everyone connected to Werder Bremen, I want to bring to your attention the crisis that is now enveloping Hamburger SV. Frank Arnesen, ‘that guy who discovered Ronaldo’, was appointed at the beginning of July 2011 as the clubs new Sporting Director. As a talent scout of some repute, Arnesen was charged with improving the squad and turning the club into title challengers. It was reported that he would be promised, by the then President of HSV, Bernd Hoffmann, somewhere in the region of €20 million to turn the team into achievers once again. In actual fact, due to Hamburg’s financial predicament, Arnesen had to sell before he could buy. Money was raised through the sale of players such as Ruud van Nistelrooy, Joris Mathijsen and Piotr Trochowski. Other experienced players such as Frank Rost and Ze Roberto also moved on to pastures new.
Arnesen’s answer to losing such a wealth of experience from the dressing room was to invest in a long-term plan to restore Hamburg to its former glory. He did this by investing in youth. Jeffrey Bruma, Gökhan Töre, Jacopo Sala, Slobodan Rajkovic and Michael Mancienne were all signed from Chelsea, while Per Ciljan Skjelbred joined from Rosenborg. The new recruits from Chelsea have an average age of just over 21, and, apart from Michael Mancienne, who spent two seasons on loan at Wolverhampton Wanderers, hadn’t played more than 5 games between them in the Chelsea first-team. Rather like the problem that ‘Arsenal London’ were suffering at the beginning of the season, Hamburg’s team was too young and inexperienced to deal with the pressure of maintaining the standards set by a well-supported and prestigious club.
They did indeed lose a lot of experienced players in the summer, and replacing them with promising youngster who, let’s face it, aren’t up to the job right now, was always going to be a risk. Is the fact that they lost those players enough to explain Hamburg’s terrible start to the season? After all, they still have experienced heads in the team: David Jarolim (300 appearances), Mladen Petric (106), Heiko Westermann (198), Dennis Aogo (94), Marcell Jansen (154) and Jose Paolo Guerrero (141) all have ample Bundesliga experience. But beyond the six names mentioned above there aren’t any that stand out in the squad as ‘experienced’ enough to handle playing for a top-six side in the Bundesliga. It is the fault of Frank Arnsesen for pursuing a strategy laden with such obvious risk, and ending up with a squad that blatantly lacks depth. Some blame should probably be laid at the feet of the club owners and ex-President Hoffmann for failing to deliver on his promise.
We shouldn’t also neglect to mention the man who has had to watch Hamburg’s defeats from the dugout this season – manager Michael Oennig. His managerial record is modest, only including a year-long stint at 1. FC Nürnberg and a spell in charge of the under 19s team at VfL Bochum. His career at the Veltins Arena also started off rather ignominiously, when it was revealed that the owners had earmarked Bernd Schuster as their preferred choice, but couldn’t afford his wages (doesn’t sound like Schuster does it?). Frank Arnesen’s problem now is that he has no choice but to publicly back a manager, who, with every passing game, looks even more resigned to the fact that he won’t be in a job very soon. Hamburg’s Sporting Director declared in a press conference this afternoon his ‘utter satisfaction with the current make-up of the squad’ and that he wasn’t panicking at all. But he also uttered those dreaded words after Saturday’s defeat, “if we play like that, we’ll pick up points.” I think I remember Sammy McIlroy saying something similar during Northern Ireland’s goalless/winless/joyless run that seemed to last for an entire qualifying campaign.
There is trouble brewing at Hamburg, and there’ll be casualties to boot. It seems clear that the manager will have to pull off a miracle to keep himself from the chop, and Frank Arnesen might also have cause for concern for his future. On the pitch, things certainly aren’t getting any easier for Hamburg. Their next three fixtures are Gladbach (home), Stuttgart (away) and Schalke (home). Now is definitely a good time to be playing the 'Redshorts.'
Results elsewhere on matchday 5 were also interesting. Now we’ll start to see what Jürgen Klopp’s Dortmund squad is made of, after they succumbed to a 1-2 home loss to Markus Babbel’s Hertha Berlin (Hertha’s superb away run continues); Ryan Babel scored twice to help Hoffenheim to an impressive 0-4 away win at Mainz 05, their first ever Bundesliga win there; Leverkusen had too much quality for newly=promoted Augsburg, winning 4-1. Oh, and Bayern Munich beat a hapless SC Freiburg 7-0. Watching Mario Gomez score from three yards gets a bit dull after a while. Here’s to also hoping for two entertaining games when Dortmund meet Arsenal and Bayer Leverkusen face Chelsea in the Champions League this week. I know who I’ll be supporting.
Results, Matchday 5
Augsburg 1-4 Leverkusen
Dortmund 1-2 Hertha BSC
Bayern Munich 7-0 Freiburg
Mainz 0-4 Hoffenheim
Stuttgart 3-0 Hannover
Gladbach 1-0 Kaiserslautern
Bremen 2-0 Hamburg
Köln 1-2 Nürnberg
Wolfsburg 2-1 Schalke
Next week sees another full schedule, but super Sunday looks the one to watch out for – Dortmund travel to Hannover, while Manuel Neuer and Bayern Munich face a testing trip to Schalke. I’ll leave you with something that we didn’t see enough of when he was in the Premier League: Ryan Babel tormenting the opposition defence:
Hau rein,
Bernie
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