Bundesliga shows English how to put pleasure before business
From plastic to metal: Grafite, the former bin-liner salesman, parades the championship shield after Wolfsburg win the Bundesliga
Gabriele Marcotti
When athletes – especially those with no track record of success – fall at the final hurdle, we like to speak of the “fear of winning”. It’s a pop psychological way of explaining what others might simply term “bottling it”.
On Saturday, Wolfsburg showed that “fear of winning”certainly wasn’t going to affect them. It was a three-way race going into the final round of the Bundesliga, the second time in three years this has happened. Felix Magath’s side had a two-point lead over Bayern Munich and Stuttgart, who were facing each other at the Allianz Arena, home of Bayern.
Given Wolfsburg’s comfortable lead in terms of goal difference, they effectively needed to avoid defeat against Werder Bremen to secure their first Bundesliga title. On the surface, it looked simple: Bremen were stuck in mid-table and had played 120 minutes in the Uefa Cup final three days earlier while Wolfsburg had gone undefeated at home in the Bundesliga, winning 15 of 16 matches.
Then again, Hugo Almeida and Diego, two of Bremen’s best players, had missed the final and were presumably fresh, Bremen are one of the most unpredictable, free-scoring sides in Europe and won 5-2 on their most recent visit to the Volkswagen Arena, Wolfsburg’s home ground, in the German Cup in March.
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As it happened, Wolfsburg stormed to a 5-1 victory, riding their talented – but unlikely – strike partnership of Grafite and Edin Dzeko to the title. Grafite scored twice (and prompted an own goal), Dzeko struck once and Zvjezdan Misimovic also got on the scoresheet.
The goals brought the joint Bundesliga tally of Dzeko, the lanky Bosnian 23-year-old who nearly joined Portsmouth in January, and Grafite, the journeyman former door-to-door bin-liner salesman from Brazil, to 54, eclipsing the previous mark held by Uli Hoeness and Gerd Müller. Throw in their goals in other competitions – including World Cup qualifiers – and the pair have produced an otherworldly cumulative tally of 78 this season.
Meanwhile, Bayern and Stuttgart were going at it hammer and tongs, playing for direct access to the Champions League. Jupp Heynckes, keeping the Bayern bench warm before Louis van Gaal’s arrival as coach this summer, led the home side to a 2-1 win.
But credit must go to Markus Babbel. The Stuttgart coach – a former Liverpool defender and Bayern stalwart – took over an eleventh-placed side in November and turned them into title contenders. All this in his first season of management and while dealing with a string of injuries.
It was a fitting finale to what was arguably the most exciting domestic campaign in Europe. The Bundesliga offered up myriad compelling storylines this year: from tiny Hoffenheim’s impressive rise – and stunning collapse, although they did finish a creditable seventh – to Hertha Berlin’s unlikely title run;from Jürgen Klinsmann’s sacking at Bayern to Magath announcing in April that he would leave Wolfsburg at the end of the season, come what may.
All this against the backdrop of the most free-scoring leading league in Europe – with 2.92 goals per game – and the best-attended. Indeed, in the penultimate week of the season, the Bundesliga averaged 50,959 spectators across its nine matches. To put this in context, only three Barclays Premier League clubs drew as many as 50,000 in any game this season.
To all this you might ask: “Yes, but are they any good?” Well, the answer is that it depends on what benchmark you use. If you take Champions League success, the answer is a resounding “no”. In the past seven years, Bundesliga sides have provided only four representatives to the last eight of the world’s premier club competition; by contrast, the Premier League has had 17 quarter-finalists.
But that’s only one guide. And it measures the achievements of the very best, not top-to-bottom quality. And if there is one thing that seems certain, it’s that this is one of the most balanced leagues in the world. Wolfsburg won the title at a rate of 2.03 points a game, a rate that was bettered by each of the top three sides in England.
Seven teams have finished in the top four over the past two seasons; while the Premier League has featured the same top four sides for the past four years (and six of the past seven).
And perhaps that’s the real story with the Bundesliga this year. As football comes to terms with the global economic crisis and Uefa tackles some of the big issues – from squad sizes to debt to fixture congestion – perhaps there is a viable alternative to the all-consuming Premier League model of doing business. And maybe it’s worth debating the relative merits of the two.
And another thing...
Pérez shoo-in should bring reality to Real’soverhaul
Now that Juan Onieva has withdrawn his candidacy for the Real Madrid presidency there is little standing in the path of Florentino Pérez, the man who ushered in the “ galáctico era”.
Perhaps that’s why, compared with previous years, there are fewer wild campaign promises. Ramón Calderón, the last man to win the election, promised to bring Arjen Robben, Cesc Fàbregas and Kaká to the Bernabéu; the last two never materialised. Joan Laporta, the present Barcelona president, was elected on another unfulfilled promise: David Beckham.
Pérez, by contrast, has been lying low. His camp has gone soft on the Cristiano Ronaldo rumours and he doesn’t have a hard-and-fast candidate for coach. But not having to contest an election means that Pérez doesn’t need to plot headline-grabbing transfers. Instead he can focus on getting the right man in. Once that’s done, they can work together to sign the players the club need. In other words, Real’s behaviour this summer might be dictated less by politics and spin and more by business and common sense. And that can only be a good thing.
Mysterious Mourinho plays percentage game
José Mourinho won the Serie A title nine days ago and one would have thought the Inter Milan coach would have faded into the background for a few days. Not so, thanks to rumours that he was ready to exercise a £6 million buyout clause in his contract. Mourinho remained mysterious. On Thursday he said there was a “99.9 per cent” chance he would stay. By Saturday, it had gone up to “99.99 per cent” and, as the Portuguese admitted, by next week “it might be 100 per cent”. Leave it to the Special One to defy convention and give an honest answer
Zitat
Original von CoK_a_cola
. Hätte er nicht bis zur 65. Minuten so stark gehalten, wäre das Spiel ganz anders ausgegangen. 
