It’s all about Gomez

By: Anna | April 2nd, 2008

Mario Gomez - where is his decision going to lead him? …or isn’t it?

Sadly for a while now, things won’t be about Gomez since he’s brought a slight injury from Hanover. He’ll be out for roughly two weeks with a torn muscle fibre in his thigh and probably won’t play in the very important matches against Hamburg and in Leverkusen.

This means, apart from the rest of the team having to remember how to score, that the scouts from roughly half a dozen clubs around Europe will have the time to take a rest now and spend their time at some other place than the Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion (maybe that’s why there were so many visitors there lately despite the lousy weather?).

Gomez, the life-insurance of the VfB. Gomez, the extraterrestrial. Gomez, the mysterious being, as he was named by the Süddeutsche Zeitung recently. He’ unbelievably talented, he’s scoring goals with apparently every part of his body and in every situation, he is very modest and down to earth and on top of that, quite good looking (okay, I will stop talking about the looks of players now. I should at least try to appear like a serious fan here).

Almost every big club in Europe seems to want him. It started last summer with Juventus Turin, he didn’t want to leave then and our manager complained about the lack of morals there. Yes, we may be among the bigger clubs of the Bundesliga, but we’re a little naïve sometimes, expecting football to have morals.
At the moment, the rumour-list includes but is by far not limited to AC Milan, AS Roma and Real Madrid. His favourite in the Spanish league, Barcelona, hasn’t asked yet as far as I know, and of course there’s the faint hope that he’ll wait until they send an offer.

Fact is that he’s extended his contract to 2012 last year and has never talked about wanting to leave soon, as in right after the Euro, and I’d really appreciate everyone to take note of that before they consider him gone already. Actually he’s not talking about it at all and I’m not quite sure whether that’s a good or a bad sign.

Of course he feels very flattered by the praise but keeps repeating himself: He can’t promise anything since football is changing so quickly, but at the moment he’s not thinking about anything but playing successful football with his club and getting called up for the Euro (while he’s actually got a secure starting place and the rest of Germany is only discussing whether Klose or Kuranyi should play next to him).

Veh and Heldt have both mentioned several times that there’s an unofficial deal that he’ll stay at least another season, while he never seems to have heard of that either. The newspapers, with the evil tabloid with the four letters leading the way argue that if he’ll play as good in the national team as he did recently, even another year at Stuttgart will be illusive. What they forget is that if a player doesn’t want to leave and the club doesn’t want to sell him, chances are quite high that nothing is going to happen. So, what does he want? I guess the only people who know are Mario himself, his advisor and maybe his parents, but that’s about it.

As a fan of the team, of course I’m hoping. By now everyone has realised that Mario Gomez won’t end his career in Stuttgart, but that can mean anything. He’s still very young, has been playing constantly for not even two years, interrupted by three rather long-ish injuries.

I hope he’ll stay another year so maybe Marica will remember how to score goals not only in his national team or they can find another striker. Secretly I wish for two years since that would allow Manuel Fischer some development time and also because I’d really love to see him play together with Christian Gentner again, who will return from his loan deal at the VfL Wolfsburg in 2009. They’ve been a great team on the pitch before and now that both are on the edge of being the best footballers they could possibly become, it’s something I wouldn’t want to miss.

Doesn’t seem quite that unhappy wearing the Stuttgart jersey As a fan of Mario himself, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t one, my wishes are similar but not quite 100% the same. Of course I still want him to stay for at least one year, for his own sake. If he’s played more than three matches in an international competition, that would surely increase his position at the club he’d join then (of course for this sentence to be proven true, we’d have to qualify for an international competition this season).
He says he wants to go abroad. That’s good, because it doesn’t have such a high grudge-potential as going to a Bundesliga rival (think Kevin Kuranyi, for example, whose name you still find on Stuttgart jerseys, but in strikethrough, covered with black tape or with “traitor” written above it).
And of course I want him to go somewhere that’s good for him. One reason for his many goals is the rest of the team, both in Stuttgart as in the National Team, working with him and setting up the goals for him. Sure, sometimes he just needs to hold his foot near a badly executed cross to score, but what if nobody is willing to set up the goals for him? What if the player next to him is an even bigger star, one who’d rather make this goal himself?

Will he end up at a club that wants him because he fits into their system (Stuttgart buys all their players for this reason but then, like I said, we’re a little naïve) or will he be somewhere because their manager rather wanted to see him on their bench than on the pitch playing for their rivals? I really love the way he plays, love the way he smiles when he’s scored and I don’t want him to lose that smile. I don’t want him to end up somewhere he’d only be a trophy.
So, whenever he leaves, to whoever will have the honour to greet him as their new striker, take care of him.
He’s very valuable and made for great tasks.