This weekâs Bundesliga review from the Guardian:
Bayern are really faltering at the moment, but I still think theyâre classy enough to win it and the break will probably do them good. Bremen are looking good now though, bar that poor effort at Olympiakos last week.
General struggles to inspire troops as Bayern flounder again
Ottmar Hitzfeldâs tactical shortcomings with Bayern Munich are in danger of making him a lame duck manager
Raphael Honigstein
December 17, 2007 9:55 AM
Timing is everything in comedy, and Jrgen L Born so nearly got it right. âBayern have spent 70m - to be one point in front of Werder,â Bremenâs CEO proclaimed to rapturous applause at the clubâs AGM back in November. If only Born had waited another month, the Northerners (along with rest of the league) would have enjoyed his sarcastic calculation even more. 70m, itâs turned out, hasnât bought Bayern any more points than their fiercest rivals could muster at all, merely a better goal difference. Both clubs are level on 36 points at the top, so the new, bigger and supposedly much better Bavarians have taken the so-called âHerbstmeisterschaftâ, the autumn championship, by the smallest of margins. (Itâs neither a proper title nor actually won in the autumn but has some psychological as well as statistical relevance - âautumn championsâ end up winning the real trophy nearly 90% of the time).
Their 0-0 draw away to an exhaustingly defensive Hertha - Bayernâs fourth scoreless draw in seven league games - felt more like a defeat on Saturday. The Berlin wall stood firm in the face of eager but woefully clueless attackers. On the rare occasions they actually made it into the box, Ottmar Hitzfeldâs men still couldnât work the keeper. Genuine attempts to get behind the defence soon gave way to desperate long-range shots. Daniel Van Buyten, their Belgian centre-back, nearly took out a flock of migratory birds with one effort. âWe dominated the match and Iâm very happy with finishing first,â said Uli Hoene. âWe have to stop being dissatisfied all the timeâ. It was a nice bit of play-acting, meant to divert attention from the fact that the story hasnât quite followed the script. Once again, they are turning into FC Hollywood: arguments and intrigue overshadow (relative) success on the pitch.
Before the season, Hoene had predicted a massive gap between his team and the competition. âThey will need binoculars to see us,â he had claimed, with only a hint of irony. But it is Bayernâs general manager who has been peering enviously through the looking glass in recent weeks: his team are now miles away from the compelling form they had shown at the beginning of the campaign. The gulf between aspiration and reality has become so wide it threatens to gobble up Bayernâs entire season. Ever since Kevin Davies scored Boltonâs second equaliser at the Allianz Arena back in October, a palpable air of crisis has pervaded Sbenerstrasse. âThere is so much pressure that the clubâs about to burst,â said Oliver Kahn last week.
This downward spiral started with Karl-Heinz Rummenigge undermining Hitzfeldâs authority (âfootball is not mathsâ) in the wake of the Bolton debacle, continued with Hoeneâs rant against critical fans at the AGM (âwho do you think you are?â) and culminated in the suspension of captain Kahn for the Hertha game. The keeper had criticised a lack of effort from Luca Toni and Franck Ribry (âBayern is not Florence or Marseille, they need to do moreâ) but then left the clubâs Christmas party a couple of hours too early: he had told Hitzfeld he had to get home to take care of the kids, only to turn up in a club with his on/off lover instead. Hitzfeld fined him 25,000, claiming that such lack of discipline could not be tolerated, lest they would all âend up in a madhouseâ. Kahn was perhaps merely careful to avoid the pitfalls of hanging around too long: a few years ago, president Franz Beckenbauer famously fathered a child with the club secretary on the very same occasion.
Anyway, French (read: impulsive and moody) right-back Willy Sagnol, who was supposed to inherit Kahnâs armband next season, is unhappy and wants to leave. In addition to that, local tabloids have exposed a rift between Germans (including Mark van Bommel) and Jos/Jacques/Gianni Foreigners, pronounced the tragic death of the âPoldi and Schweiniâ double-act - âwe are actually very different and hardly see each other off the pitch,â Schweinsteiger confessed recently - and hinted at players being envious of Toni and Ribryâs special privileges.
Dozens of articles point to a lack of clear leadership from Rummenigge and Hoene, who are evidently nervous about their investment of 100m, wages included. âBayern: a palace without a roof,â is Frankfurter Rundschauâs verdict; the Berliner Zeitung sees the club as âa giant building siteâ. The two architects must indeed shoulder the main portion of the blame, albeit for slightly different reasons.
Rummenigge and Hoeneâs real mistake was not being radical enough last year. They embarked on a cultural revolution - by spending big on big players - but unwisely chose the safest pair of hands to be its leader. Hitzfeld, the hungry, ruthless moderniser: it was always wishful thinking, a contradiction in terms. When the 58-year-old was reappointed 11 months ago, he was advertised as a revitalised man who had bravely caught up on all the latest training regimes. An initial flourish of attacking football moved Rummenigge to call him âthe perfect manager for Bayernâ, but Hitzfeldâs dignified, non-confrontational management style soon ran into trouble again. At Dortmund and during his first time in Munich, he had been unable to motivate teams that had won everything. When this team began to believe they were going to win everything, Hitzfeld uttered public warnings but obviously could not find the right words in the dressing room.
Even more worryingly for the bosses, the players have shown little, if any tactical development under his tutelage. Everything seems contingent on individual sparks of genius; they havenât developed any discernible system of play. Free-kicks and corners have been embarrassingly harmless, too. And even Hitzfeld loyalists canât figure out why the manager never seems to make any decent substitutions. Against sheepish Hertha, he needlessly persisted with two holding midfielders until the very end and made his first and only change in the 82nd minute: a striker for a striker. Maybe heâs a prisoner of the past and has developed a bad case of cainophobia as a result of terrible experiences: in the Champions League final of 1999, he put on Thorsten âmis-hit of the centuryâ Fink for Lothar Matthus with five minutes to go, whereas he took off Ribry much too early against Bolton. But whatever the reason, the strange paralysis on the touchline has certainly exacerbated the teamâs fatigue.
Hitzfeldâs shortcomings have only been discussed obliquely by the press because âthe Generalâ is an eminently nice, decent guy, whereas the brash pair of Kalle and Uli are much easier targets. The point is, neither party wants to continue the relationship beyond May 2008: the classic lame duck scenario looms large, as well as a long, complicated search for the next manager. Bayern will still win it, of course, mainly because Bremen are more open at the back than a diarrhoeic humpback whale. Please come back in six weeks to find out the details. Frohes Fest und guten Rutsch.
Results: Cottbus 5-1 Hannover, Hertha 0-0 Bayern, Bremen 5-2 Leverkusen, Karlsruhe 1-1 HSV, Wolfsburg 4-0 Dortmund, Bielefeld 2-0 Stuttgart, Schalke 2-1 Nrnberg, Rostock 2-0 Bochum, Duisburg 0-1 Frankfurt.