Saison 2004/2005
Moderator: Verwaltung
Ich hab übrigens fast geweint vor Freude, als Mainz aufgestiegen ist, weil ich die für sehr sympathisch halte. Und Klopp super finde. Und Thurk hat mich dann ganz nah an den Nervenzusammenbruch gebracht im Interview bez. seines Wechsels nach Cottbus.
Müsste ein Richard Schweizer nich eher zu den Young Boys Bern halten? *gg* OK, wir machen nen Jurawelt-VFB-Fanclub auf.
Müsste ein Richard Schweizer nich eher zu den Young Boys Bern halten? *gg* OK, wir machen nen Jurawelt-VFB-Fanclub auf.
Anbei a kloans Fundstück aus der wie immer pointiert schreibenden englischen Presse:
It's good to be back
Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger
After all these years, every Bundesliga season still manages to produce
firsts.
Maybe that shouldn't come as a suprise, given that we live in
stats-obsessed times and will thus often hear of unprecedented and incredible
feats. (Which are usually 'unprecendented and incredible' because we'd never
bothered with or thought about them previously). Yet the campaign now under way
has already presented us with firsts that really do deserve a mention.
For instance, there's the first Bundesliga team ever that prepared for the
new season by means of a five-day survival camp in the Swedish wilderness. Or
how about the first time a Bundesliga game kicked off as late as 9.35pm? Next
was the first game in which only one player wore a black ribbon, which made it
look from a distance as if his team fielded two skippers. Plus, of course, this
whole business of the stars (those on the shirts, not on the pitches or in the
skies). But first things first.
In July, coach Jürgen Klopp took newly-promoted FSV Mainz to Sweden,
though not to play football or hang around in the lobby of a posh hotel. The
squad and the coaching staff spent almost a week in various forests, sleeping in
tents and rising at seven in the morning to wash themselves in ice-cold ponds.
In all, the team covered almost 600 kilometres by canoeing down rivers.
The diet consisted of fish the players caught themselves, roasted over a
self-made camp-fire. I don't know about your powers of imagination, but I can't
quite see David Beckham chopping wood in a greasy sweater in the middle of
nowhere, hoping that Luis Figo was once a boy-scout so that he can start a fire
in order for everyone to taste the trouts Raúl has meanwhile caught, killed and
gutted.
Comparably bizarre was the grand opening of the new season. A few minutes
before title-holders Bremen and title-hopefuls Schalke were to kick off on
Friday evening, a power failure blacked out Werder's Weserstadion. Or perhaps
'blackout' is wrong, because the only electrical gadgets still running were,
funnily, the floodlights.
For more than three quarters of an hour, league officials, club
representatives and the referee discussed whether or not to start the game and
disregard the fact there would be no tv coverage. When they finally decided this
was the only sensible solution, the floodlights went as well.
In the end, power returned. At least off the pitch because the game was
quite drab and had all the markings of a goalless draw, until the young
Paraguayian Nelson Valdez bundled home Werder's winner seven minutes from time.
When he raised his arms in celebration, you could see a black ribbon he
had put on to demonstrate his thoughts were with his home country, where
probably more than four hundred people had died in a fire two days earlier.
No-one else on the pitch was wearing such an armband, because Valdez hadn't
informed anyone of his intention.
And there was another interesting thing about Valdez's kit. On his shirt,
right above Werder's logo, there was a solitary star. Naturally, all his
team-mates proudly wore that as well.
However, there was no such thing on Schalke's shirts, even though they
have won seven championships to Bremen's four. To explain what this is all
about, we have to go back one year.
Prior to the 2003-04 season, VfB Stuttgart decided to celebrate the club's
110th birthday by putting four stars on the players' shirts, one for each
national championship won (1950, 1952, 1984, 1992). The new shirts were sold to
the fans in stores, and even the club's polo-shirts to be worn by the coaching
staff sported them.
Yet the Swabians had forgotten to inform the DFL, the organisation that
runs the two professional leagues, about this nice idea they had nicked from
Italy. (Where one star is awarded per ten titles.) Predictably, the DFL vetoed
the innovation, rather understandably arguing that clubs couldn't do as they
pleased in this matter and pointing out that one star for each championship
was out of the question, otherwise Bayern's shirts would be cluttered indeed.
Over the next twelve months, the DFL came up with a system of their own:
Clubs are now awarded one star for three championships won, two stars for five,
three stars for ten (or more). Which is why, for the first time, some teams now
take to the field in shirts celebrating their achievements, not just their
sponsors. To be precise: five teams. They are Bayern Munich, Borussia
Mönchengladbach, Werder Bremen, Borussia Dortmund and SV Hamburg. And this is
where it's getting even more complicated.
Both Nuremberg and Schalke have won as many or more championships than all
of the teams mentioned above, save Bayern. Yet their shirts are, by comparison,
depressingly empty. That's because the DFL decided to only count league titles,
meaning championships won since the Bundesliga was formed in 1963. All of
Schalke's championships came before that, and eight of Nuremberg's nine.
Now, why did the DFL snub all the championship-winning sides between 1903
and 1963? My guess is: to show the DFB, the German FA, who's boss now. Four
years ago, the DFB lost the control over the two professional leagues to the
DFL, and the two organisations have been quarrelling ever since. The DFB would
certainly have awarded Schalke and Nuremberg (and others) stars, yet the DFL
seems keen on pointing out that they don't care about what happened before the
professional age.
In that near-forgotten age, SpVgg Fürth won three championships in 1914,
1926 and 1929. Since a merger in 1996, the club is known as Greuther Fürth and
currently in the Second Bundesliga. And they played last season with three stars
on their shirt! How did they trick the DFL, you ask? Simple.
To celebrate their 100th anniversary, Fürth redesigned their club badge,
complete with three fat stars at the top. After all, some clubs have animals in
their badge, others buildings, one even a bobsled (Unterhaching). So why not
have stars in there? Whenever I watch Fürth, I can see their grinning officials
before my inner eye, and a few fuming DFL bigshots.
And I think (admiringly): Now, that's really Italian.
- Richard
- Super Power User
- Beiträge: 1141
- Registriert: Dienstag 27. Juli 2004, 11:46
- Ausbildungslevel: RA
Ich bin mir meiner namentlichen Herkunft durchaus bewusst*g*. Jedoch scheint nach der neueren Onomastik noch nicht geklärt zu sein, ob es sich beim Namen "Schweizer" nicht auch um eine alte süddeutsche Bezeichnung eines Almbauern handeln könnte.perry slalom hat geschrieben: Müsste ein Richard Schweizer nich eher zu den Young Boys Bern halten? *gg* OK, wir machen nen Jurawelt-VFB-Fanclub auf.
Daher muhhh ich fleissig für den VfB Stuttgart .
Fanclub klingt jedenfalls gut, noch jemand dabei*g*?
@ Mumpitz, sensationeller Artikel, wo hast den ausgegraben?
- Richard
- Super Power User
- Beiträge: 1141
- Registriert: Dienstag 27. Juli 2004, 11:46
- Ausbildungslevel: RA
- Christian aus Mainz
- Mega Power User
- Beiträge: 2097
- Registriert: Dienstag 11. Mai 2004, 18:07
- Ausbildungslevel: Ass. iur.