Two for one

By: Anna | August 19th, 2008

At first, I didn’t want to say anything at all about the UEFA-Cup qualifier against Györ, because it wasn’t enough of a football match to be commented on as such, despite the 2:1 win. But now I found an opportunity to talk about both that match and the first Bundesliga game in Mönchengladbach, by simply saying that the match played yesterday had everything that the one in Stuttgart on Thursday hadn’t: Attractive offensive football, the proper use of goal chances and, all in all, a good performance of the whole team. And that’s all there is to say about that.

It’s a strange thing that Stuttgart generally perform better against opponents that are at their level of football, but struggle against teams that actually shouldn’t be a problem. Maybe they’re underestimating the opponent, or it’s the difficulty to finish when the smaller team play with nine guys in their defence and one striker, I don’t know.

But fact is, the newly promoted team had promised to “play along” and they did, indeed.

Stuttgart played, compared to Thursday, with four changes: Hitzlsperger, Pardo, Boka and Delpierre came for Khedira, Bastürk, Lanig and Magnin. While one can’t necessarily blame it on the changes, fact is that there was a whole different team on the pitch.

The match started with two teams on par with each other, and both soon had their first chances: First Gomez had a very good opportunity to score in the eighth minute and only Gladbach’s Brouwers kept them from receiving an early goal, then striker Rob Friend found himself in a one vs. one with Lehmann, who showed an amazing reflex in diving down and touching the ball with the finger tips of one hand, making it miss the goal by only a few meters.

After a throw in at the height of Stuttgart’s penalty area, Gladbach’s captain Rösler had to leave the pitch for the treatment of a laceration under the left eye, apparently caused when Pardo’s elbow (who didn’t even see Rösler) hit him when they both jumped up for the ball.

Anyway, Stuttgart used the advantage of being in superior number when Ricardo Osorio focused the attention of four Gladbach players on himself, still managed to dribble past the midline and passed to Thomas Hitzlsperger, who scored the beautiful 1:0 from 25 metres away. It was one of those goals that make every TV commentator mention that back when he was playing for Aston Villa, he was nicknamed “the Hammer”, leaving keeper Heimeroth no chance.

Lehmann showed another great parade when Matmour, after some confusion in Stuttgart’s defence, had the chance to shoot on the goal without anyone holding him back. Nevertheless, Stuttgart was the more active and aggressive team and had quite a few good chances, for example when Jaures lost the ball to Jan Simak. Stuttgart’s midfielder passed it back to Marica, who had no problem scoring the 2:0 - after he missed the goal four minutes earlier from a similar position.

But Gladbach were close to scoring, too, especially when Lehmann ran out of the goal but couldn’t get the ball away from Friend, whose shot, in the second attempt, could only be cleared by Arthur Boka with a great deal of luck. Who knows if Stuttgart would’ve recovered from that goal.
But Stuttgart are still best when they play against an equally forward-minded team: in the 44th minute, Gladbach was far into Stuttgart’s half, when they lost the ball, and Mario Gomez took the chance of the fast counter-attack, tricking defender Brouwers, and scored the 3:0.

The first interesting scene in the second half was one for Gladbach, again, when Rob Friend again was left alone in front of the goal - the defence’s focus was on Marin - but Lehmann was able to defuse the situation without too much trouble.

All in all, Gladbach were having a better second half of the match, as illustrated by the higher amount of goal chances, while Stuttgart leaned back and tried to keep the score. First Boka had to clear the ball on the goal line for the second time in the match, but the following throw-in was quickly turned to the 3:1 final score by Rob Friend, who had been sorely neglected by the Stuttgart defence, and that not for the first time in that match.

The defending wasn’t too bad in general, though there were a few points where one could clearly see that they had to get used to the line up and though he surely didn’t play his best season last year, Fernando Meira left a gap that’s difficult to close, especially when his “replacement” Boulahrouz is injured as well.

One of the best moments for Gladbach was when Marin dribbled past Pardo and Tasci and only missed the goal by not even a metre. The goal had motivated the players again, and so Stuttgart weren’t having quite as much of an easy time as one could have expected after the first half - though one has to say that at least they didn’t stop playing after conceding one, a habit that the team occasionally has.

To sum it up, it was quite an interesting match with good chances for both teams, but with Stuttgart being a tad faster, more motivated and, as a consequence, luckier. The strikers seem to be in good shape, even though some of the chances could have been used better, the team seems eager to show a better performance than last year; only the defence is in need of some fine-tuning. But it might look completely different when Boulahrouz is fit to play again.

Ten players left Stuttgart for the various national team matches on Wednesday - Serdar Tasci is hoping to play his first match in the German national team’s jersey.

The next match against Bayer Leverkusen is next Saturday. Let’s hope the players don’t bring any injuries back home and that Boulah finally gets the chance to celebrate his comeback to the Bundesliga.