bayern vs. sporting...
OMG. I met Poldi queenie_ann and Schweini Sandra. And it was absolutely brilliant! They're so adorable - and so like their alter egos! Do I really have to say that we had a lot of fun? No, I guess that's self-explanatory. *squee*
I drove to Munich in the morning of Tuesday and met Timo rotschopf there, and we went into town by bus to meet the others. We were already late, but Poldi and Schweini were later. *LOL* They had landed somewhere near the outskirts and had to get back in town, but that didn't matter. We were patient. And made fun of the Sporting fans who walked across the Marienplatz and behaved rather embarrassingly. There were a few Bayern fans, too, wearing jerseys of Makaay, Salihamidzic, Schweinsteiger - and OTTL! We totally squealed when we saw this Ottl fan. And there was a funny Sporting fan - a little man, about 60 years old, about as tall as wide and with a little Sporting scarf around his neck. Awww! ;)
Then, Poldi and Schweini came and there was a lot of hugging and cuddling and squeeing. :) They immediately recognized us, but that wasn't too difficult since Timo was wearing a Borussia Dortmund headscarf and I wore my "Danke Deutschland" t-shirt, a "Deutschland" cap and my Bayern scarf. We got a lot of interesting comments and looks because some people still don't realize that a Dortmund fan and a Bayern fan can be friendly with each other. *facepalm*
Our first station was Starbuck's, of course, where we had chocolate mochas. Mine was with black chocolate, the others had their mochas with white chocolate. Timo and I had prepared a little quiz with funny nicknames of football players and coaches and Schweini and Poldi had to guess who the nicknames applied to. That was a lot of fun! Afterwards, we went to the FC Bayern fanshop in town because I still needed a Bayern jersey - and OMG, I now have a wonderful home jersey with Philipp Lahm's name and number on the back! *squeebounce* It's so pretty! And all mine!
We then went to the Hard Rock Café to have some drinks and play "Shag, Marry, Kill", which was a lot of fun. I think it was the first time that almost all of us killed Christoph Metzelder, Sebastian Kehl and Philipp Degen. WTF? I had to marry Carsten Ramelow. Yuck. And two Italy players. More yuck.
At about 7 pm, we said goodbye to Timo, who wanted to go back to her flat and watch the Bremen vs. Levski match. Schweini, Poldi and I went to their hotel room to change, and then we took the subway to Fröttmaning. There were a LOT of Bayern fans and almost NO Sporting fans at all anymore. But when we arrived at the Arena and saw the Sporting fanblocks, we realized why we had not seen too many of them - there weren't too many!
The Allianz Arena was glowing in a pretty red and we tried to take some photos, but apparently, my camera has problems with things glowing in the dark. My photos either came out too blurry or too dark. Boo.
We missed the team's warm-up, which was sad, but we arrived exactly when the Bayern squad was announced. And when they walked into the stadium, we were already sitting in our seats. :D The atmosphere was brilliant, with lots and lots of cheering and singing from the two Bayern fanblocks. Wow. So amazing. Everyone should be able to experience that. I can't wait to go to the Allianz Arena again. We had awesome seats, by the way - second rank, but very close to the field. During the first half, the Bayern goal's left side was right in front of us, which means that we got a perfect view of what I Philipp Lahm was doing.
Alas, the game didn't really match the atmosphere and the brilliant rest of the day. During the first 20 minutes, Bayern showed that they were actually present, but after that, there was chaos. The midfield became colourblind and almost always passed the ball to a green-white-striped opponent instead of a red teammate. I think the team formation was to blame for that - another of Magath's failed experiments. Van Bommel wasn't playing. Instead, they had Christian Lell on the right defence wing and Willy Sagnol on the right midfield wing, which didn't work at all. Lell was okay, but Sagnol was a bit overtaxed in the midfield. He didn't have a good day, either. I Philipp Lahm played on my usual left defence wing position, but in front of me him, there was Hasan Salihamidzic, and nothing worked. Roy Makaay was the best forward we had that day, but his corners were too short nevertheless. I wondered why they didn't let Sagnol do the corners from the right. He usually does them, doesn't he? The worst player on the field was once again the stadium decoration, Roque Santa Cruz. He didn't even play football. He was just plain horrible. Always losing the ball, not managing to get a single chance to kick the ball towards the goal. The problem was also that both Pizarro and Santa Cruz are "old-school" forwards. They stand in front of the opponent's goal and wait for the ball to come from the midfield, but when the ball isn't coming, they don't even THINK about running into the midfield and getting the ball themselves. Makaay did that a lot of times during the match, but when he then passed to Santa Cruz or Pizarro, they didn't know what to do with it.
Anyway, Poldi, Schweini and I were totally annoyed with all the bad passes. When the half-time break was announced, I so didn't believe that the teams had already played for 45 minutes. O_O NOTHING had happened! Seriously! Nothing at all! WTF?
The second half was as miserable as can be. No interaction, no inspiration, no interesting experiments. And more bad passes. Makaay and Pizarro had some more 100 % chances and blew them. In fact, only 6 of Bayern's 11 players were playing football - and I really can't say what the others were doing. Julio dos Santos had come for Christian Lell, which resulted in Sagnol moving back to his right defence wing position and Salihamidzic changing sides to play in front of him. The first thing dos Santos did was commit a foul. Then he lost the ball a few times, did some bad passes, did ONE good pass, committed another foul - and so it went for the rest of the match. GAH. And always, I Lahm had to make up for all of dos Santos' stupid mistakes. But the biggest mistake was Magath's refusal to sub Santa Cruz earlier than the 80th minute. He should have been subbed after the half-time break, because Karimi played really really well during the 10 minutes he was on the field. He certainly would have been able to achieve something, had he had more time. A LOT OF LOVE for Lahm, Demichelis, van Buyten and Ottl. They were magical during the whole 90 minutes. I strongly believe that when Lucio returns, he won't be a starter anymore. Demichelis is doing so extremely well in the central defence, much better than he used to do in the midfield, and he's so valuable for the club right now that he HAS to become a starter. Van Buyten saved situations that couldn't even be saved. And Lahm helped out everywhere - in the defence, the midfield, even the forward. The only piece of criticism I have for him is the fact that TWICE during the game, he stood exactly where he had stood in the World Cup opening game and all the Sporting defence players stood like the Costa Rica defence had stood, and Lahm decided to pass the ball to someone else instead of kicking it straight at the goal. He should have dared it, should have tried to score. Nobody would have said anything if he had missed. We all would have applauded him for trying. Instead, the ball got lost somewhere within the Sporting penalty area and that was that. Kahn had a very good day, too. He didn't have much to do, but there were two situations where he showed that he still had great reflexes. And Ottl did his best in the midfield, even though most of the time, he couldn't really do much because he had 5 Sporting players around him. He distributed the ball cleverly, his bad pass quota was rather low, compared to others'. He's one of those extremely valuable players who deserve to be a starter, just like Demichelis.
All in all, I have to say that Bayern was extremely lucky that Sporting was too stupid to score or failed to get past Demichelis, van Buyten and Lahm. Bayern was horrible, but fortunately, Sporting was even worse. The 0:0 was deserved, though not satisfactory in the least. After the match, Poldi, Schweini and I ranted about the game until we had to part. I was especially disappointed because it was my first live match. *sniffles* But I'm certain my next one will be better, so I have something to look forward to.
When I got back home to Timo, I ranted for another 30 minutes and Timo patiently listened to what I had to say, which was so lovely of her. When I had finished, there was a match analysis by Franz Beckenbauer on TV, and he said exactly the same things I had said to Timo earlier. *LOL*
Formation: Kahn - Lell (dos Santos, 46.), Demichelis, van Buyten, Lahm - Ottl - Sagnol, Salihamidzic - Santa Cruz (Karimi, 79.) - Makaay, Pizarro
For the future (e.g. when both Hargreaves and Podolski have fully recovered), I'd suggest the following formation, though: Kahn - Sagnol, Demichelis, van Buyten, Lahm - Ottl - Schweinsteiger, Hargreaves - van Bommel - Podolski, Makaay.
This might result in van Bommel becoming a bit more involved in the match. I still don't understand why Bayern refused to buy Diego, but since they did, they have to try out now if van Bommel can do for Bayern what Diego is doing for Bremen. They bought him to become a key player and he has to prove now if he's really worth it. But for that, he has to be a STARTER!
Anyway. I had a rather weird dream about Philipp Lahm having a twin and smooching and groping him in a wardrobe. WTF?
And this morning, Timo almost threw me out of my bed, saying that Schweini and Poldi would arrive soon. It was soooooo great to see them again! We played a football card game and had pizza for dinner, which was great! Alas, they had to leave rather early because they had a long way home in front of them.
Timo and I will work on our Metzelly fanvid now. Or something. *LOL*
I drove to Munich in the morning of Tuesday and met Timo rotschopf there, and we went into town by bus to meet the others. We were already late, but Poldi and Schweini were later. *LOL* They had landed somewhere near the outskirts and had to get back in town, but that didn't matter. We were patient. And made fun of the Sporting fans who walked across the Marienplatz and behaved rather embarrassingly. There were a few Bayern fans, too, wearing jerseys of Makaay, Salihamidzic, Schweinsteiger - and OTTL! We totally squealed when we saw this Ottl fan. And there was a funny Sporting fan - a little man, about 60 years old, about as tall as wide and with a little Sporting scarf around his neck. Awww! ;)
Then, Poldi and Schweini came and there was a lot of hugging and cuddling and squeeing. :) They immediately recognized us, but that wasn't too difficult since Timo was wearing a Borussia Dortmund headscarf and I wore my "Danke Deutschland" t-shirt, a "Deutschland" cap and my Bayern scarf. We got a lot of interesting comments and looks because some people still don't realize that a Dortmund fan and a Bayern fan can be friendly with each other. *facepalm*
Our first station was Starbuck's, of course, where we had chocolate mochas. Mine was with black chocolate, the others had their mochas with white chocolate. Timo and I had prepared a little quiz with funny nicknames of football players and coaches and Schweini and Poldi had to guess who the nicknames applied to. That was a lot of fun! Afterwards, we went to the FC Bayern fanshop in town because I still needed a Bayern jersey - and OMG, I now have a wonderful home jersey with Philipp Lahm's name and number on the back! *squeebounce* It's so pretty! And all mine!
We then went to the Hard Rock Café to have some drinks and play "Shag, Marry, Kill", which was a lot of fun. I think it was the first time that almost all of us killed Christoph Metzelder, Sebastian Kehl and Philipp Degen. WTF? I had to marry Carsten Ramelow. Yuck. And two Italy players. More yuck.
At about 7 pm, we said goodbye to Timo, who wanted to go back to her flat and watch the Bremen vs. Levski match. Schweini, Poldi and I went to their hotel room to change, and then we took the subway to Fröttmaning. There were a LOT of Bayern fans and almost NO Sporting fans at all anymore. But when we arrived at the Arena and saw the Sporting fanblocks, we realized why we had not seen too many of them - there weren't too many!
The Allianz Arena was glowing in a pretty red and we tried to take some photos, but apparently, my camera has problems with things glowing in the dark. My photos either came out too blurry or too dark. Boo.
We missed the team's warm-up, which was sad, but we arrived exactly when the Bayern squad was announced. And when they walked into the stadium, we were already sitting in our seats. :D The atmosphere was brilliant, with lots and lots of cheering and singing from the two Bayern fanblocks. Wow. So amazing. Everyone should be able to experience that. I can't wait to go to the Allianz Arena again. We had awesome seats, by the way - second rank, but very close to the field. During the first half, the Bayern goal's left side was right in front of us, which means that we got a perfect view of what I Philipp Lahm was doing.
Alas, the game didn't really match the atmosphere and the brilliant rest of the day. During the first 20 minutes, Bayern showed that they were actually present, but after that, there was chaos. The midfield became colourblind and almost always passed the ball to a green-white-striped opponent instead of a red teammate. I think the team formation was to blame for that - another of Magath's failed experiments. Van Bommel wasn't playing. Instead, they had Christian Lell on the right defence wing and Willy Sagnol on the right midfield wing, which didn't work at all. Lell was okay, but Sagnol was a bit overtaxed in the midfield. He didn't have a good day, either. I Philipp Lahm played on my usual left defence wing position, but in front of me him, there was Hasan Salihamidzic, and nothing worked. Roy Makaay was the best forward we had that day, but his corners were too short nevertheless. I wondered why they didn't let Sagnol do the corners from the right. He usually does them, doesn't he? The worst player on the field was once again the stadium decoration, Roque Santa Cruz. He didn't even play football. He was just plain horrible. Always losing the ball, not managing to get a single chance to kick the ball towards the goal. The problem was also that both Pizarro and Santa Cruz are "old-school" forwards. They stand in front of the opponent's goal and wait for the ball to come from the midfield, but when the ball isn't coming, they don't even THINK about running into the midfield and getting the ball themselves. Makaay did that a lot of times during the match, but when he then passed to Santa Cruz or Pizarro, they didn't know what to do with it.
Anyway, Poldi, Schweini and I were totally annoyed with all the bad passes. When the half-time break was announced, I so didn't believe that the teams had already played for 45 minutes. O_O NOTHING had happened! Seriously! Nothing at all! WTF?
The second half was as miserable as can be. No interaction, no inspiration, no interesting experiments. And more bad passes. Makaay and Pizarro had some more 100 % chances and blew them. In fact, only 6 of Bayern's 11 players were playing football - and I really can't say what the others were doing. Julio dos Santos had come for Christian Lell, which resulted in Sagnol moving back to his right defence wing position and Salihamidzic changing sides to play in front of him. The first thing dos Santos did was commit a foul. Then he lost the ball a few times, did some bad passes, did ONE good pass, committed another foul - and so it went for the rest of the match. GAH. And always, I Lahm had to make up for all of dos Santos' stupid mistakes. But the biggest mistake was Magath's refusal to sub Santa Cruz earlier than the 80th minute. He should have been subbed after the half-time break, because Karimi played really really well during the 10 minutes he was on the field. He certainly would have been able to achieve something, had he had more time. A LOT OF LOVE for Lahm, Demichelis, van Buyten and Ottl. They were magical during the whole 90 minutes. I strongly believe that when Lucio returns, he won't be a starter anymore. Demichelis is doing so extremely well in the central defence, much better than he used to do in the midfield, and he's so valuable for the club right now that he HAS to become a starter. Van Buyten saved situations that couldn't even be saved. And Lahm helped out everywhere - in the defence, the midfield, even the forward. The only piece of criticism I have for him is the fact that TWICE during the game, he stood exactly where he had stood in the World Cup opening game and all the Sporting defence players stood like the Costa Rica defence had stood, and Lahm decided to pass the ball to someone else instead of kicking it straight at the goal. He should have dared it, should have tried to score. Nobody would have said anything if he had missed. We all would have applauded him for trying. Instead, the ball got lost somewhere within the Sporting penalty area and that was that. Kahn had a very good day, too. He didn't have much to do, but there were two situations where he showed that he still had great reflexes. And Ottl did his best in the midfield, even though most of the time, he couldn't really do much because he had 5 Sporting players around him. He distributed the ball cleverly, his bad pass quota was rather low, compared to others'. He's one of those extremely valuable players who deserve to be a starter, just like Demichelis.
All in all, I have to say that Bayern was extremely lucky that Sporting was too stupid to score or failed to get past Demichelis, van Buyten and Lahm. Bayern was horrible, but fortunately, Sporting was even worse. The 0:0 was deserved, though not satisfactory in the least. After the match, Poldi, Schweini and I ranted about the game until we had to part. I was especially disappointed because it was my first live match. *sniffles* But I'm certain my next one will be better, so I have something to look forward to.
When I got back home to Timo, I ranted for another 30 minutes and Timo patiently listened to what I had to say, which was so lovely of her. When I had finished, there was a match analysis by Franz Beckenbauer on TV, and he said exactly the same things I had said to Timo earlier. *LOL*
Formation: Kahn - Lell (dos Santos, 46.), Demichelis, van Buyten, Lahm - Ottl - Sagnol, Salihamidzic - Santa Cruz (Karimi, 79.) - Makaay, Pizarro
For the future (e.g. when both Hargreaves and Podolski have fully recovered), I'd suggest the following formation, though: Kahn - Sagnol, Demichelis, van Buyten, Lahm - Ottl - Schweinsteiger, Hargreaves - van Bommel - Podolski, Makaay.
This might result in van Bommel becoming a bit more involved in the match. I still don't understand why Bayern refused to buy Diego, but since they did, they have to try out now if van Bommel can do for Bayern what Diego is doing for Bremen. They bought him to become a key player and he has to prove now if he's really worth it. But for that, he has to be a STARTER!
Anyway. I had a rather weird dream about Philipp Lahm having a twin and smooching and groping him in a wardrobe. WTF?
And this morning, Timo almost threw me out of my bed, saying that Schweini and Poldi would arrive soon. It was soooooo great to see them again! We played a football card game and had pizza for dinner, which was great! Alas, they had to leave rather early because they had a long way home in front of them.
Timo and I will work on our Metzelly fanvid now. Or something. *LOL*