fc bayern münchen - fc barcelona: 0-1...
As some of you might know, I was at the Allianz Arena yesterday to watch Bayern play Barcelona.
There were a couple of reasons for this match. As the ticket says, it was the farewell match for Mehmet Scholl, who has been with the club for 15 years now and is still alive. (As he said himself. XD) But it was also an occasion for Roy Makaay to deliver a short speech about the reasons for his transfer to Feyenoord Rotterdam and to say goodbye. Still, I don't believe that most of Barcelona's players particularly cared about those two things. Their treat was the Franz-Beckenbauer-Cup, which they won in the end.
My uncle and I left Augsburg at about half past two and we arrived at the Allianz Arena about one and a half hours later. There, my uncle dropped me and drove the car to a parking lot on the outskirts of Munich and took the subway back to the stadium. While I was waiting for him, I strolled around in front of the stadium where they had built up several action booths of Bayern's sponsors. T-Home had a machine that measures the speed of a ball you kick towards a goal, and there were quite interesting bets going on there. Some people betted their own jerseys that the moderator wouldn't be able to kick the ball into the net at a speed that's divisible by 11. In return, he betted a new Bayern jersey that they wouldn't be able to do it. As far as I heard, one guy lost the bet against the moderator and had to go watch the match barechested later. ;) Also, there were booths that sold beer and soft drinks and huge pretzels, but when I finally got thirsty, I spent about 45 minutes queuing in front of such a booth. That wasn't too nice. Oh, and there was a booth in which people took a photo of you and photoshopped it into a group photo of the Bayern squad. I'd have loved to get one of those, but the queue was endless.
I bought Bayern's new yearbook, which I'm going to scan (well, partly) in due course. If you want to read the portrait of a particular player, please drop me his name here.
At about half past four, my uncle arrived and we went into the stadium. We decided to have a little look at the fanshop, but there were so many people in there that we hardly saw anything. Also, it was freaking hot, I thought I'd collapse. Eventually, we arrived at our seats, and we didn't have to wait long until the action started on the pitch. Unfortunately, my photos aren't that good because we sat in the upper gallery and I only have threefold zoom.
First, an Australian band performed a couple of songs. From what I understood, Mehmet Scholl had wished for them to perform because he had seen them play in Canada, or something. They were pretty good, by the way! I wish I could remember their name!
After they had finished playing, Olli Kahn appeared on the pitch and started doing his warming-up exercises to the music of "Olli Kahn" by Die Prinzen. That was pretty hilarious.
The other players arrived soon after that.
Barcelona's players arrived, too.
Look, it's the traitor Thierry Henry! (I still love him. I do.)
Mark is talking to some random Barcelona dude (can't see who he is). XD
And look who's here! XD
If my eyes aren't betraying me, this is an OTP moment. :D (I really must get myself a better camera. But I think it's van Buyten, only he wears his socks like that.)
Andi!
Van Buyten's socks again. XD And Micho, showing his back. Mmmh.
The hero himself. :)
I still have no clue who Mark is talking to (it's someone different this time), but he should actually get back to training, shouldn't he? ;)
Am I the only one who wants to grab Micho's butt? And hard at that? *mind boggles*
But Schweini is doing some interesting exercises here, too!
Look, it's Rense!
And Pretty Marcell!
If he's trying to drive me crazy, he's bloody well succeeding. *drools shamelessly*
(Miro Klose is not that impressed, fortunately. XD)
After that, I stopped taking photos of the warming-up. I do regret that now, but it can't be helped. I suppose that considering what was going on on the pitch, I completely forgot that I had a camera with me in the first place. I was just too amazed, amused and intrigued. I don't know if this was a one-time thing or if he's always like that, but if you ever get the chance to watch Bayern's boys warming up, keep your eyes on Micho. He did the most hilarious things. After the normal stretching exercises, he juggled with the ball and did some amazing heel tricks with it. Then, he stepped on the ball with two legs and actually kept his balance for a couple of seconds, then jumped off, and the ball remained exactly where it was and didn't bounce away. Also, he had great difficulties concentrating on his warming-up when suddenly, there was a video about Mehmet Scholl and his career on the big screens. Instead of continuing his exercises like everyone else, he looked up to the screen and watched the video. XD Several times, he laughed and applauded! I thought I'd die from adorable.
A while later, Willy Astor, famous Bavarian singer and composer of the Bayern song "Stern des Südens", performed a farewell song for Mehmet ("Superscholli") to the tune of said Bayern song. Everyone could sing along, the lyrics appeared on the screens. Oh, that song is so adorable. I wish it were downloadable somewhere. I made a little vid of the performance so you can get a good idea what the song sounded like, but unfortunately, I couldn't film the whole song. The video can be downloaded here, the full lyrics are here. And when he was done and everyone was still training around the little stage they had set up on the pitch, Micho stood there and applauded. I mean, okay, he didn't really need to warm up because he didn't get to play during the first half, but there were others on the pitch that didn't exactly need to warm themselves up and they didn't take the time to applaud or anything. I don't know how close Micho and Scholli really were, but Micho made it obvious that he likes Scholli a lot, which is just sweet.
After a while, the players left and Roy Makaay entered the pitch. He said a couple of words about his choice to leave Bayern and transfer to Feyenoord, expressed his happiness that he and his family are home again after such a long time abroad, and thanked the management, the players and the fans for the wonderful time he had at Bayern and that he'll miss it a lot. He was given a bouquet and then walked around the pitch, waving at the crowds and applauding. That was so sweet! The whole stadium was standing up and waving and applauding.
When he had finished his tour around the pitch, a group of artists from Europa Park (a famous adventure park in Germany) did their performance.
The performance involved a huge round sheet with Scholli's name and number on it, which I found very cute:
And then, the teams entered!
I bet Thierry is making fun of the boy in front of him again. XD
Ronaldinho/Xavi, anyone? (Not that I'd want to read that.)
Before the match started, the Bayern management thanked Scholli and gave him a merit pin, making him the second honourary player of the club after Giovane Elber. Ronaldinho congratulated him with a gift from the whole Barcelona squad. And then, the match started!
FC Bayern München: Kahn (46. Rensing) - Lell, Lucio (46. Demichelis), van Buyten, Lahm (46. Jansen) - Altintop, Ottl (88. Ismaël), van Bommel (46. Zé Roberto), Schweinsteiger (70. Wagner) - Scholl (53. Ribéry) - Toni (46. Klose)
FC Barcelona: Victor Valdés - Zambrotta (46. Márquez), Oleguer (89. Belletti), Thuram (61. Milito), Abidal - Yaya Touré, Xavi, Iniesta (46. Deco) - Eto'o (46. Messi), Henry, Ronaldinho (46. Giovani)
Goals: 0-1 Messi (85.)
Referee: Dr. Brych (München)
Yellow Card: Oleguer
I assumed you've all seen the match on TV, so I don't have any photos of it. However, I found some from the Bayern website:
I'm not going to write a detailed match report, either, but if you haven't seen the match and are interested in some match highlights, please comment with your e-mail address. To sum up, the match was okay. Barcelona was rather passive at the beginning and let Bayern do some pretty combinations. As much as it hurts me to admit, Lucio was the best player during the first half. He actually did some defense work for a change, and he advanced cleverly and didn't immediately lose the ball when he approached Barcelona's penalty box. Altintop was a miracle on the right side. Brilliant! The problem was once again Bayern's use of chances, and I think they really have to work on that, because you can't win a match by playing beautiful football, you have to score goals. I daresay it would have been better if Toni and Klose had played together, not the one after the other. The gap between the midfield and Toni was too big during the first half, and during the second, Klose was assisting a striker that wasn't there. But I don't want to complain, not when they totally dominated Barcelona for one half. :) Spain's Big Evil didn't even manage to get out of their own half of the field for a while, Bayern totally cut them into. After Ronaldinho and Eto'o had left (I was quite disappointed by their performance, to be honest) and Deco and Messi were on the pitch, Barcelona played better. I have to say, however, that whenever Barcelona's players approached Bayern's penalty box, Bayern's defenders fairly separated them from the ball (Lell had some good defensive actions, and Bayern's central defense stood like a wall, van Buyten did some awesome tackles, I was impressed!), but when Bayern approached Barcelona's penalty box, Barcelona's players always committed a foul. They couldn't take the ball from Bayern's players in a fair challenge. I found that pathetic, honestly.
In the 53rd minute, the old #7 made way for the new #7 - Scholl was substituted with Ribéry. Our veteran got standing ovations that went on for several minutes. We were all standing up, applauding, and doing la-ola waves. The fanblocks went wild with their scarves and flags. A medley of goodbye songs (including Sasha's World Cup song) boomed through the speakers. It was amazing. For a couple of minutes the match that was still going on on the pitch became secondary, unimportant. Scholli had all eyes on him. It was an amazing, intense atmosphere, something I've never experienced before.
As for Scholli's performance, here's an excerpt from the Bayern website because I couldn't say it better:
Scholl's 53-minute appearance included trademark backheels, lay-offs, crosses and imaginative passes. Barcelona's late winner, a storming Lionel Messi effort, in no way spoiled the evening. "The result was of secondary importance, and it’s a minor consolation that I wasn't on the pitch when the goal was scored. My result was 0-0, and that's pretty good against Barcelona,“ Mehmet grinned.
The quip was typical of the player's humour. "I'll probably start about three weeks before hand. Barcelona aren't much good, are they?“ he deadpanned when asked about preparing for his final outing.
So Messi somehow managed to score and thus avoided a penalty shoot-out. The goal was beautiful. I applauded, even though he scored against my team. Of course, he was damn lucky that his shot hit the goalpost like that, but it did, and that's all that matters. I'm pretty convinced that neither Rensing, nor Demichelis, nor van Buyten are to be blamed for this goal. Jansen and Zé Roberto should have taken the ball away from Messi before he managed to shoot, but they didn't. I'm not really mad at them, though. Considering that about one year ago, we lost 4-0 against Barcelona, a 0-1 is damn good. ;)
Oh, and I wore my Champions League jersey this time, the one with Demichelis' name and number on the back, and - believe it or not - I didn't see a single other Demichelis jersey until my uncle and I stood on the subway platform at the end of the match to wait for our train. Only then, I spotted a boy wearing a Demichelis home jersey. I'd almost have talked to him. XD
My uncle and I then took the subway to the parking lot, but we didn't go there directly because we were both very thirsty and so we had drinks at a restaurant first. At about half past eleven, I finally arrived at my flat, grateful that I had taken today off. ;) And now I'll stop blathering. *gags self*
ETA: Forgot something. Was I the only one who laughed about Victor Valdés? He was so bad at goal-kicks, they all flew past the sideline. At some point, he let a defender do the goal-kicks for him because he just couldn't do them. Can anyone explain to me why Barcelona have a goalie who can't even do goal-kicks?
There were a couple of reasons for this match. As the ticket says, it was the farewell match for Mehmet Scholl, who has been with the club for 15 years now and is still alive. (As he said himself. XD) But it was also an occasion for Roy Makaay to deliver a short speech about the reasons for his transfer to Feyenoord Rotterdam and to say goodbye. Still, I don't believe that most of Barcelona's players particularly cared about those two things. Their treat was the Franz-Beckenbauer-Cup, which they won in the end.
My uncle and I left Augsburg at about half past two and we arrived at the Allianz Arena about one and a half hours later. There, my uncle dropped me and drove the car to a parking lot on the outskirts of Munich and took the subway back to the stadium. While I was waiting for him, I strolled around in front of the stadium where they had built up several action booths of Bayern's sponsors. T-Home had a machine that measures the speed of a ball you kick towards a goal, and there were quite interesting bets going on there. Some people betted their own jerseys that the moderator wouldn't be able to kick the ball into the net at a speed that's divisible by 11. In return, he betted a new Bayern jersey that they wouldn't be able to do it. As far as I heard, one guy lost the bet against the moderator and had to go watch the match barechested later. ;) Also, there were booths that sold beer and soft drinks and huge pretzels, but when I finally got thirsty, I spent about 45 minutes queuing in front of such a booth. That wasn't too nice. Oh, and there was a booth in which people took a photo of you and photoshopped it into a group photo of the Bayern squad. I'd have loved to get one of those, but the queue was endless.
I bought Bayern's new yearbook, which I'm going to scan (well, partly) in due course. If you want to read the portrait of a particular player, please drop me his name here.
At about half past four, my uncle arrived and we went into the stadium. We decided to have a little look at the fanshop, but there were so many people in there that we hardly saw anything. Also, it was freaking hot, I thought I'd collapse. Eventually, we arrived at our seats, and we didn't have to wait long until the action started on the pitch. Unfortunately, my photos aren't that good because we sat in the upper gallery and I only have threefold zoom.
First, an Australian band performed a couple of songs. From what I understood, Mehmet Scholl had wished for them to perform because he had seen them play in Canada, or something. They were pretty good, by the way! I wish I could remember their name!
After they had finished playing, Olli Kahn appeared on the pitch and started doing his warming-up exercises to the music of "Olli Kahn" by Die Prinzen. That was pretty hilarious.
The other players arrived soon after that.
Barcelona's players arrived, too.
Look, it's the traitor Thierry Henry! (I still love him. I do.)
Mark is talking to some random Barcelona dude (can't see who he is). XD
And look who's here! XD
If my eyes aren't betraying me, this is an OTP moment. :D (I really must get myself a better camera. But I think it's van Buyten, only he wears his socks like that.)
Andi!
Van Buyten's socks again. XD And Micho, showing his back. Mmmh.
The hero himself. :)
I still have no clue who Mark is talking to (it's someone different this time), but he should actually get back to training, shouldn't he? ;)
Am I the only one who wants to grab Micho's butt? And hard at that? *mind boggles*
But Schweini is doing some interesting exercises here, too!
Look, it's Rense!
And Pretty Marcell!
If he's trying to drive me crazy, he's bloody well succeeding. *drools shamelessly*
(Miro Klose is not that impressed, fortunately. XD)
After that, I stopped taking photos of the warming-up. I do regret that now, but it can't be helped. I suppose that considering what was going on on the pitch, I completely forgot that I had a camera with me in the first place. I was just too amazed, amused and intrigued. I don't know if this was a one-time thing or if he's always like that, but if you ever get the chance to watch Bayern's boys warming up, keep your eyes on Micho. He did the most hilarious things. After the normal stretching exercises, he juggled with the ball and did some amazing heel tricks with it. Then, he stepped on the ball with two legs and actually kept his balance for a couple of seconds, then jumped off, and the ball remained exactly where it was and didn't bounce away. Also, he had great difficulties concentrating on his warming-up when suddenly, there was a video about Mehmet Scholl and his career on the big screens. Instead of continuing his exercises like everyone else, he looked up to the screen and watched the video. XD Several times, he laughed and applauded! I thought I'd die from adorable.
A while later, Willy Astor, famous Bavarian singer and composer of the Bayern song "Stern des Südens", performed a farewell song for Mehmet ("Superscholli") to the tune of said Bayern song. Everyone could sing along, the lyrics appeared on the screens. Oh, that song is so adorable. I wish it were downloadable somewhere. I made a little vid of the performance so you can get a good idea what the song sounded like, but unfortunately, I couldn't film the whole song. The video can be downloaded here, the full lyrics are here. And when he was done and everyone was still training around the little stage they had set up on the pitch, Micho stood there and applauded. I mean, okay, he didn't really need to warm up because he didn't get to play during the first half, but there were others on the pitch that didn't exactly need to warm themselves up and they didn't take the time to applaud or anything. I don't know how close Micho and Scholli really were, but Micho made it obvious that he likes Scholli a lot, which is just sweet.
After a while, the players left and Roy Makaay entered the pitch. He said a couple of words about his choice to leave Bayern and transfer to Feyenoord, expressed his happiness that he and his family are home again after such a long time abroad, and thanked the management, the players and the fans for the wonderful time he had at Bayern and that he'll miss it a lot. He was given a bouquet and then walked around the pitch, waving at the crowds and applauding. That was so sweet! The whole stadium was standing up and waving and applauding.
When he had finished his tour around the pitch, a group of artists from Europa Park (a famous adventure park in Germany) did their performance.
The performance involved a huge round sheet with Scholli's name and number on it, which I found very cute:
And then, the teams entered!
I bet Thierry is making fun of the boy in front of him again. XD
Ronaldinho/Xavi, anyone? (Not that I'd want to read that.)
Before the match started, the Bayern management thanked Scholli and gave him a merit pin, making him the second honourary player of the club after Giovane Elber. Ronaldinho congratulated him with a gift from the whole Barcelona squad. And then, the match started!
FC Bayern München: Kahn (46. Rensing) - Lell, Lucio (46. Demichelis), van Buyten, Lahm (46. Jansen) - Altintop, Ottl (88. Ismaël), van Bommel (46. Zé Roberto), Schweinsteiger (70. Wagner) - Scholl (53. Ribéry) - Toni (46. Klose)
FC Barcelona: Victor Valdés - Zambrotta (46. Márquez), Oleguer (89. Belletti), Thuram (61. Milito), Abidal - Yaya Touré, Xavi, Iniesta (46. Deco) - Eto'o (46. Messi), Henry, Ronaldinho (46. Giovani)
Goals: 0-1 Messi (85.)
Referee: Dr. Brych (München)
Yellow Card: Oleguer
I assumed you've all seen the match on TV, so I don't have any photos of it. However, I found some from the Bayern website:
I'm not going to write a detailed match report, either, but if you haven't seen the match and are interested in some match highlights, please comment with your e-mail address. To sum up, the match was okay. Barcelona was rather passive at the beginning and let Bayern do some pretty combinations. As much as it hurts me to admit, Lucio was the best player during the first half. He actually did some defense work for a change, and he advanced cleverly and didn't immediately lose the ball when he approached Barcelona's penalty box. Altintop was a miracle on the right side. Brilliant! The problem was once again Bayern's use of chances, and I think they really have to work on that, because you can't win a match by playing beautiful football, you have to score goals. I daresay it would have been better if Toni and Klose had played together, not the one after the other. The gap between the midfield and Toni was too big during the first half, and during the second, Klose was assisting a striker that wasn't there. But I don't want to complain, not when they totally dominated Barcelona for one half. :) Spain's Big Evil didn't even manage to get out of their own half of the field for a while, Bayern totally cut them into. After Ronaldinho and Eto'o had left (I was quite disappointed by their performance, to be honest) and Deco and Messi were on the pitch, Barcelona played better. I have to say, however, that whenever Barcelona's players approached Bayern's penalty box, Bayern's defenders fairly separated them from the ball (Lell had some good defensive actions, and Bayern's central defense stood like a wall, van Buyten did some awesome tackles, I was impressed!), but when Bayern approached Barcelona's penalty box, Barcelona's players always committed a foul. They couldn't take the ball from Bayern's players in a fair challenge. I found that pathetic, honestly.
In the 53rd minute, the old #7 made way for the new #7 - Scholl was substituted with Ribéry. Our veteran got standing ovations that went on for several minutes. We were all standing up, applauding, and doing la-ola waves. The fanblocks went wild with their scarves and flags. A medley of goodbye songs (including Sasha's World Cup song) boomed through the speakers. It was amazing. For a couple of minutes the match that was still going on on the pitch became secondary, unimportant. Scholli had all eyes on him. It was an amazing, intense atmosphere, something I've never experienced before.
As for Scholli's performance, here's an excerpt from the Bayern website because I couldn't say it better:
Scholl's 53-minute appearance included trademark backheels, lay-offs, crosses and imaginative passes. Barcelona's late winner, a storming Lionel Messi effort, in no way spoiled the evening. "The result was of secondary importance, and it’s a minor consolation that I wasn't on the pitch when the goal was scored. My result was 0-0, and that's pretty good against Barcelona,“ Mehmet grinned.
The quip was typical of the player's humour. "I'll probably start about three weeks before hand. Barcelona aren't much good, are they?“ he deadpanned when asked about preparing for his final outing.
So Messi somehow managed to score and thus avoided a penalty shoot-out. The goal was beautiful. I applauded, even though he scored against my team. Of course, he was damn lucky that his shot hit the goalpost like that, but it did, and that's all that matters. I'm pretty convinced that neither Rensing, nor Demichelis, nor van Buyten are to be blamed for this goal. Jansen and Zé Roberto should have taken the ball away from Messi before he managed to shoot, but they didn't. I'm not really mad at them, though. Considering that about one year ago, we lost 4-0 against Barcelona, a 0-1 is damn good. ;)
Oh, and I wore my Champions League jersey this time, the one with Demichelis' name and number on the back, and - believe it or not - I didn't see a single other Demichelis jersey until my uncle and I stood on the subway platform at the end of the match to wait for our train. Only then, I spotted a boy wearing a Demichelis home jersey. I'd almost have talked to him. XD
My uncle and I then took the subway to the parking lot, but we didn't go there directly because we were both very thirsty and so we had drinks at a restaurant first. At about half past eleven, I finally arrived at my flat, grateful that I had taken today off. ;) And now I'll stop blathering. *gags self*
ETA: Forgot something. Was I the only one who laughed about Victor Valdés? He was so bad at goal-kicks, they all flew past the sideline. At some point, he let a defender do the goal-kicks for him because he just couldn't do them. Can anyone explain to me why Barcelona have a goalie who can't even do goal-kicks?