Who’s perfect
By: Anna | July 26th, 2008
There is a German furniture store which is based on the concept of selling designer furniture, which usually costs a fortune, with “slight blemishes”, as the advertising tells us, and with a drastic reduction of the prices.
There’s something about the VfB Stuttgart’s transfers this season that reminds of this, except that we are buying players which are rumoured to be, well, difficult, and not selling them. It’s been often connected to the financial state of the VfB. Fact is, the club can’t afford spending as much money on transfers as, say, Bayern Munich, or even Werder Bremen, and so they end up with transfers that cause a certain degree of scepticism.
Like Jan Simak, who is a great player (and someone for standards. I don’t think we hand someone for goals after free kicks since the days of Krassimir Balakov), but didn’t leave the right impression the first time he played in the Bundesliga for Hannover and Leverkusen and developed problems with alcohol and a depression.
Or Jens Lehmann, who might still be one of the best goalkeepers around, but, well, hasn’t been nicknamed “Mad Jens” for nothing, and it’s disputable if the time he spent on Arsenal’s bench has actually been doing him any good. Rumour has it that the management is a little scared of him and decided to have him on a leash for the main part of the season (see picture).
Or new fullback Khalid Boulahrouz, who was more or less greeted with being called problem-case by one German tabloid, even though I still haven’t been able to figure out why exactly, except for that old story of his sudden injury shortly before he went to Chelsea.
Or Ljuboja, who was more or less kicked out of the Stuttgart squad and who the club tried to get rid of for two years with loan deals at Hamburg and Wolfsburg, and who is now returning and claims to regret what he did (though he had just signed until 2009, he suddenly demanded a doubling of his earnings).
I’m almost tempted to say that it’s a shame that Meira left, he’d have perfectly fit in with all the other problem cases. But even without our ex-captain and without Boateng, who I suppose won’t come after all, one might think there’s a lot of danger potential in this new team.
Of course a certain part of that is the usual tabloid talk, and I’d like to remind that all of these are, beyond everything else, very good football players. Still, I have to admit a certain concern about how much this is going to influence the team character, especially with all the young players from the own youth, who so often are described as “very decent boys”.
Most of the time I’m strangely optimistic about next season, though. Well, we’ll see how it’s going after the first matches.
Oh, right, and talking about matches, Stuttgart is up against Saturn Ramenskoje on Sunday. It’s only the second time the clubs meet, after the first-leg UI cup match of last weekend, which the Russians won 1:0. Trying my new optimism, here’s what speaks for Stuttgart:
- It’s a home match and there’ll be a lot more support than the thirty-something fans who travelled along with the team to the outskirts of Moscow,
- There has been one more week of training (one of the main reasons for the loss was the lack of fitness, while Ramenskoje are already playing league matches)
- while Stuttgart used the week for a training camp, Ramenskoje had a match on Wednesday.
The players who returned from the Euro in the last week, namely Hitzlsperger, Gomez, Lehmann and Bouahrouz are not going to play, but apart from that, all players are fit and available for the last chance to get something good out of last season.
Category: Uncategorized
Subscribe
|
Print
|
Share
      |
Comments
-
Boulahrouz would probably play the right-back. I hope we can engage a centre-back soon
Posted from
United States
-
That’s enough, Anna. For some reason, I cannot stop giggling over the Jens Lehmann photo.
Now you mentioned Krassimir Balakov. I remembered the first time I read about him (it was on the Wikipedia page of the club) and saw that current national coach Jogi Loew is mentioned nearby (I was already aware that he was Stuttgart coach at one time prior to seeing Balakov being mentioned in the same Wikipedia link). Do you know/remember anything from the time the club was known for the ‘magic triangle’ (as the Wikipedia page in English calls it)? And to imagine just recently I was reading an interview from bundesliga.de where Fredi Bobic (another one part of the famous ‘magic triangle when Jogi was the Stuttgart coach) was speaking on his predictions for the new season. The interview even used a photo when he, Balakov and Giovane Elber were together at the club – http://www.bundesliga.de/en/liga/news/2008/index.php?f=0000101321.php&fla=1
One aspect of the club’s history which fascinates me after reading how the club was like in the 90s, from Wikipedia.
Being still a schoolgirl in those days, I have to admit football was never really on my radar until very much later. 
Posted from
Singapore -
I have strong hopes for all of our “problem children” to become an important part of our team this season. I think all of them, with probably the exception of Ljuboja, have a good chance at starting the season in the first 11.
I also have high hopes for the match tomorrow. If we can get over this obstacle. It will surely become a little bit easier because we will have some of our best players available.
On a slightly less positive note, I feel bad for our Manu Fisher as he skipped the U-19 Euros to play for us in the UI Cup and Germany became Europameister today. Hopefully he can score for us tomorrow!
Posted from
United States -
From the kicker website regarding the UI Cup – Cacau and Matthieu Delpierre are avaliable for the match.
Crossing my fingers for the boys as well.
Posted from
Singapore -
Diana, I don’t know much more about the Magic Triangle myself except for the name, that was long before my times as a Stuttgart fan. But I’m very interested in the club’s backstory myself and I’ll try to adress that in a post soon, if I find the time.
Peter, I have very good feelings about them myself, even if some reasons speak against them. And the match just proved that Simak is indeed very valuable for the team.
Manu Fischer himself said he doesn’t regret skipping the Euro because it helped both the club and him and he congratulates the players. Still, I’d have loved to see him as a baby champion
He’ll simply have to win the next U-21 chmapionship, then.Posted from
Germany -
No problem.
This is off-topic Anna, did you get the tickets to the friendly against Arsenal? Back then you said that you will try to get it. It will be especially interesting if Jens Lehmann gets to play against his now-former club given I read last week that he hoped to play against them.Regarding the match, I should have streamed it. But then I ended up depending on the live commentary on the kicker website. To imagine I missed the ‘goals’ that were reported. I needed sleep (the match began at midnight here) and I actually switched off the computer minutes before Simak scored.
So, through the second qualifying round of the UEFA Cup.
Posted from
Singapore -
Oh, thanks for asking, yes, I did. I’ll be in Stuttgart on Wednesday and Thursday for the season opening and the match, and greatly looking forward to it (I’ll try to take as many pictures as possible and if they’re any good, I’ll post some of them here). Of course Jens playing his former club would be a highlight.
I didn’t even get to see the match as I was at work and depended on a friend texting me about the goals, but judging from the summary I’ve seen via VfB-tv, it was a good match.
Ah, UEFA-Cup. Good to be in an international competition again. I guess I should go and try to write a match report now
Posted from
Germany -
” but judging from the summary I’ve seen via VfB-tv, it was a good match.”
That would be a case of club-tv turning a bad match into a good match. I started watching it live but then soon turned my attention to other things and only listened to some of the commentary in the background, because it really wasn’t that entertaining and Stuttgart lacked pace and creativity.
I watched the match again later in the second half, as there was this embarrassing possibility that Stuttgart could get kicked out in the first round, and it still was crappy. But the Jan Simak free kick was beautiful and I was happy Marica broke his personal deadlock and scored two goals in extra time.
Posted from
United States -
Ah, thanks, Jan. I try to take everything delivered by club tv with a grain of salt, but it’s difficult to determine the quality of the match when all I see are the goal chances Stuttgart had (usually there’s a stream of the whole match available, which is allright if I tune out the comments, but for the UI-Cup they only have those five minute snippets).
*shakes head* You just can’t trust anyone these days
Posted from
Germany
Comments are closed
Home 
