ETO Györ finished third in the Hungarian League last season and took on Georgian club FC Zestafoni in the first qualification round.

That’s about all I know about this club, and Stuttgart’s officials don’t know much more than that, either:
“Personally, I don’t know the team at all. But we’ll watch the club and get ourselves some video material”, said coach Armin Veh, Horst Heldt added, “the club is an unknown name for me.”

Both emphasize that they want to reach the next round, though. Let’s hope we’ll know more in two weeks. The first leg match will be at 14. August in Stuttgart, the second leg is going to be played at 28. August (in, I suppose, Györ, if that’s the name of the city).

One sentence that he said in the post match interview seems to nail it: “It takes two teams to play a match, and they definitely weren’t playing football.”

He adds, “They were only defending, and while we had more ball posession and one, two chances, we didn’t use them. That kind of match is always hard to play.”

Nevertheless, after 120 minutes which probably made Mario Gomez, who was watching on the tribunes, stifle more than the one yawn that was caught on camera, a beautiful free kick goal by Jan Simak and two goals from Ciprian Marica, who might show this season that he hasn’t forgotten how to score goals, Stuttgart is through to the second qualification round for the UEFA-Cup. Magnin, by the way, also knows that Cipri only scored twice because “we’ve been training together for the last two weeks. He learned everything from me.”

The opponent for the next round will drawn on Friday.

While the fans should have been if not by the match itself, at least be pleased by the result, one event caused protest among the audience: When the players went to the curve to celebrate with their fans, they didn’t get the expected cheering, but were booed out and partly even insulted. The reason? Danijel Ljuboja, who hadn’t even played, had come with the team.

The fans still haven’t forgiven him the contract stunt from two years ago. The by now inevitable comment of Horst Heldt: “It’s an impertinence what a few fans dared to do there. The team wanted to say thank you and was booed. Ljuboja is a part of the team, and the players’ reaction [leaving the pitch without any more celebration] was absolutely correct.”

Now, I do agree with him to a certain degree, and I think even Ljubo deserves at least a new chance to prove that he changed. But still I can’t help but shake my head at Heldt’s comment since the situation reminds so much of the goalkeeper problem of last season, when somehow neither coach nor management said anything supportive about Schäfer until it was too late.

So, what happened in these three weeks?

- transfers, part one: As expected, Antonio da Silva transferred to the KSC, while Alexander Farnerud went to Denmark and will play for Brondby IF in the future. Good luck to both of them.

- watching the Euro from a VfB fan point of view was disappointing, as most of the Stuttgart-based players failed to impress: Ludovic Magnin took over the captain’s armband for Switzerland after the injury of Alex Frei but wasn’t able to lead the team to the knock out stages, Ciprian Marica spent three matches on the bench and Fernando Meira captained Portugal to their first lost match in the tournament, caused a penalty and got yellow-carded, all in the first match he played from the beginning. But of course when it comes to the disappointment of the tournament, Mario Gomez takes the cake. I’ll spare you further comments on his performance since it’s been discussed everywhere, for example the euro section at the world cup blog.

- and then there was Thomas Hitzlsperger, who for once didn’t disappoint at all, but played a very good match against Portugal and an only slightly less good one against Turkey. From one moment to the other he was discussed as the new leader personality and captain in Stuttgart, an idea that found a lot of appreciation, though not from Fernando Meira. But I’ll get to that in a second.

- transfers, part two: in a “let’s hope this is the best for all sides”-move Raphael Schäfer returned to his former club Nürnberg, where he may have to play in the second league, but at least he can be sure that the fans are going to support him. Nürnberg is glad to have him back, Stuttgart is glad to be rid of him.

- transfers, part three: In the last post before my break I wrote about Stuttgart and the relation to their young players, who often come from the own youth, and that a decision was made to continue supporting them and emphasise this strength of the club. Letting Andreas Beck go to Hoffenheim might seem contradictory at first sight, but leaving might have been the right step for him since it was obvious that Veh would always prefer Osorio in that position. This leaves us with only one rightback, as Hilbert is still a midfielder and Pischorn actually belongs to the inner defence. So far there is no replacement in sight.

- the Gomez-to-Bayern rumours never quite stopped and were heated by a not so thought-out comment by Stuttgart’s chairman Dieter Hundt, who was sitting in the audience of a football comedy show when the host asked him what he thought of a transfer and jokingly answered that considering his current performance [at the Euro], any club would have to pay a three-digit million Euro sum for Gomez.

The striker reacted understandably affronted about Hundt “profiling himself on my expense” (quote from Mario’s website) and demanded an excuse. Shortly after the two of them met and discussed the problem, and when Horst Heldt had a conversation with Bayern officials and made clear that they would not let Gomez go in the summer break, and Bayern announced in their first press conference of the new season that they were not interested any longer, one might have though that the issue was cleared.

However, just yesterday Karl-Heinz Rummenigge threw in the very unnecessary comment that they could have Gomez any time they wanted to thanks to a release-clause in the contract. He wishes.
“The FC Bayern can’t come and take away our players whenever they want to” is Heldt’s only comment. He adds, “I’m absolutely sick of this discussion.” I’ve got a hunch that he isn’t the only one who thinks that way.

- meanwhile the playing schedules for next season were released: Stuttgart starts into the new season in Mönchengladbach, followed by a home match against Bayer Leverkusen. Hannover 96 will come to visit Stuttgart the next week, then the VfB will travel to Hoffenheim for derby number one. Derby number two follows on the fifth matchday in a home match against the KSC.

- the training has been going surprisingly well: Marco Pischorn is currently recovering from a broken calf-bone, but apart from that there haven’t been any injuries worth mentioning so far. But the training camp has also brought a surprise: Fallen-from-grace forward Danijel Ljuboja, who returned from his loan in Wolfsburg, is back training with the first team. Apparently he really regrets the contract stunt he pulled two years ago and is hoping for a new start.

- However, a so far successful training camp, the lack of injuries and Manuel Fischer deciding he wouldn’t participate in the under-nineteen European championship and support his club in the UI-Cup instead didn’t prevent the team from losing the first match against Saturn Ramenskoje with 0:1.

- transfers, part four: For a while it seemed as if he had lost his voice, as suddenly Fernando Meira refused to comment on anything. His agent Roger Wittmann however used every opportunity to comment on the recent events, especially when it became known that Armin Veh indeed wasn’t planning with Meira as captain for the next season.
In the end, Meira asked to be released from his contract and transferred to Galatasaray Istanbul. This is only the short version; I’ll try to be a little more detailed in a new post.

- transfers, part five: A warm welcome to Khalid Boulahrouz! The full back transferred from FC Chelsea to Stuttgart and signed a contract for four years. He’s looking forward to the new challenge. Here’s to hoping that his playing style, which he describes as “positively aggressive” is going to fit to the rest of the team and be a good influence on the back four, which has been a little too sleepy for some parts of the last season.

- some more transfer rumours, just for kicks: Despite what has been said before, this time things point to a transfer of Christian Gentner to the VfL Wolfsburg. The player, who is on a loan deal there, feels very comfortable within the team and sees his future with the Wolves rather than in Stuttgart.
Recently Armin Veh said that the VfB isn’t looking for new players any more, though there still are some rumours around Kevin-Prince Boateng. The problem is that Stuttgart wants a loan deal, while Tottenham is looking to sell the midfielder.

Hertha’s Arne Friedrich was rumoured to come for a while, but after the signing of Boulahrouz it seems unlikely that the club will look for another fullback, especially since with Serdar Tasci and Marco Pischorn (once he recovers) two young players are waiting for another chance to prove themselves.

Pavel Pardo had an offer from his former club CF America from Mexico City and said “if the decision was only my own, I would leave.” But the club made clear that they would not let him go. Since he sees Stuttgart as his second home, staying does not bother him all that much, though. Maybe it is a hint to the club to make a step towards a contract extension, since it was also the security to play three more years that interested the Mexican, and his contract in Stuttgart only runs until 2009.

- Today the VfB team and training staff left the training camp at the Öschberghof in Going. After a week of rain, the sun was shining for the last training session, at least. But despite the weather the team is optimistic and looking forward to the next season. The second leg UI-Cup match against Ramenskoje is sceduled for Sunday, here’s to hoping the team has improved their fitness since last week and will eventually find their way to the UEFA Cup.