Dieter Hecking enjoyed his first win with struggling Borussia Mönchengladbach as comeback earned the spoils against another troubled side, Bayer LeverkusenEven after the exploit, approval was far from unanimous. André Schubert’s rise at Borussia Mönchengladbach had been dizzying; from under-23 coach to reluctant first-team caretaker to permanent head coach. From bottom of the Bundesliga to the Champions League. He inherited a team that had lost its first five games of the 2015-16 Bundesliga season from Lucien Favre, perhaps the best coach in the division, but one that felt as if he had run out of solutions.Schubert took that side and infused it with counterattacking zest. Gladbach won their first six league fixtures under the new man on their way to...
Leipzig’s exciting, young squad, like Hoffenheim in 2009, have made a fine start to life in the Bundesliga and so far look to be the real dealYou’d only expect it to happen once in a generation at best, not twice in a decade. RB Leipzig’s spectacular first half of the season is not without precedent, though. The parallels with the last promoted club from Bundesliga 2. to make their presence felt at the top-flight’s summit so immediately after promotion have come thick and fast – perhaps unsurprisingly, since Hoffenheim’s coach in their lightning start to their Bundesliga debut campaign of 2008-09 was Ralf Rangnick, who is now Leipzig’s sporting director, having guided the team to promotion last season. There’s plenty...
The podders look ahead to the Boxing Day fixtures at the top and bottom of the Premier League. Plus, Bayern belittle Leipzig; the return of Joey Barton; and Carlos Tevez cashes in in ChinaSubscribe and review: iTunes, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast & Stitcher.It’s the final Football Weekly before Christmas (and indeed, Chanukah), so we’ve rolled out James Horncastle, Rafa Honigstein and Simon Burnton alongside AC Jimbo to look ahead to the Boxing Day games and their impact at the top and bottom of the Premier League. Continue reading...
Every day, another manager gets it. Every day, another manager gets closer to getting it in the neck. And all eyes are on Borussia and Wolfsburg’Tis the season to wind down, buy stuff that nobody needs nor wants, avoid mulled wine drunkards, rummage through recycled paper bags in search of the odd wormless chestnut, laze about until the sun goes down again, bake Plätzchen, watch Johannes B Kerner or Markus Lanz feign interest in a collection of Z listers, musically talented kids and sickness/catastrophe/marriage breakdown survivors and, most of all, be grateful that we Germans have been blessed with peace and freedom – the peace and freedom that comes from being left alone by football for four weeks.Alas, the most...
The departures of Dietmar Beiersdorfer and Klaus Allofs last weekend continue the pattern of extreme upheavals that have gripped the BundesligaA notoriously wonky table and frantic managerial change have long gone together like Blut and Grätsche in the Bundesliga. Each season, half a dozen unexpected overachievers put pressure on the remaining two-thirds of the league. Halfway through the campaign, roughly one half of the clubs will have replaced their coaches in hope of a bounce.This year, however, has produced extreme levels of upheaval. A tidal wave of disruption has cut through the league, sweeping away not just the poor blokes in shellsuits and roll-neck jumpers but many of the formerly bullet-proof powerbrokers. They stuck around for years, sometimes decades, unshiftable,...