Now that the Germany’s football fairytale this summer is nothing more than a vague memory, that the vuvuzelas have, thank the Lord, been discarded, and that people who tack mini-flags to their cars once every four years have put them away, we can return to less exciting but more regular fare: the daily soap that is the Bundesliga.
Things get going for the 48th time on Friday 20th August with Bayern München coming up against VfL Wolfsburg. The Bavarians are everyone’s favourites to take the championship again, whilst newly promoted St. Pauli in Hamburg is where the smart money is for relegation. The rest of the league will fit in somewhere in between.
Raul from Spain is the top signing this year, with Schalke having taken a second ex-Madrid player into the team, Christoph Metzelder. By way of exchange, Real Madrid gets Sami Khedira from VfB Stuttgart and Mesut Özil from Werder Bremen, showing just how much higher-profile German football has become and how popular the Bundesliga is world over. Oddly enough, big players leaving it only makes the league more famous as new talent comes in to fill the breach and make a name for itself; current hot names are Robinho at Schalke and Hatem Ben Afra at Bremen.
Big news: Michael Ballack is back in Germany, having joined the Bayer Leverkusen squad. Simon Kjaer, a Dane who got teams all over Europe interested, is now at VfL Wolfsburg; the Wolves’ trainer Steve MacClaren is also from foreign parts. Borussia Dortmund, too, are looking abroad, with their hopes resting on the Polish striker Robert Lewandowski.
Nevertheless, not one game has been played yet, so there’s not much more that can be said really, is there? So you’d think. The team websites, however, are already in action, interpreting the empty tables to suit themselves and using their placing order to put out some quite strong statements before the first whistle has been blown.
A little more diplomatic in terms of its use of language is the German Football Association (DFL), which has simply taken the listings from the end of last season, added the two newcomers onto the end, and set all the scores to zero. No-one gets hurt, but it’s kinda boring.
Werder Bremen, however, know how to get a guy interested and have taken the same table – but put themselves at the top.
There’s even more fun to be had by looking at the relationships between teams that are rivals: 1- FC Kaiserslautern, for example, have put themselves at the top of their table, but placed their duelling partners Frankfurt at number 9. They give their mates in the state capital Mainz, however, 4th place.
HSV in Hamburg is in a more generous mood, putting themselves at no. 1 and their derby rivals St. Pauli at no. 2. Their arch rivals in Munich, however, get kicked to last place.
Meanwhile, 1. FC Köln is a little less friendly to its Derby sparring partner Borussia Mönchengladbach: they got their webmaster to put the pesky Gladbachers down to 17th place.
There’s a clear desire for revolution on the 1. FC Nürnberg site, with their table consistently placing small teams before big: Mainz, Pauli, Mönchengladbach and Cologne, followed by Kaiserslautern, Nürnberg and Hannover. The big teams are all at the bottom: Leverkusen, Munich, Stuttgart, HSV, Bremen and Schalke. If this prophesy turns out to be true, it sure will lead to no small amount of surprise amongst both fans and bookies alike.
So despite the rather businesslike atmosphere the teams like to aim for, anyone who knows where to look can see the old rivalries poking livening things up. Let’s hope that the star players, too, really get into the spirit!
(By Stefan Reichart and Brian Melican)
