After a season close to the abyss, Bayer Leverkusen’s rebuilding job has begun in earnest this season and is slowly showing signs of promiseFor a long time, we’ve known exactly what Bayer Leverkusen are about. They impress, they entertain, they qualify for Europe and achieve to a certain level without actually getting it over the line. The old ‘Neverkusen’ epithet from the Klaus Toppmöller days has endured well. Last season, and the summer that followed, changed all that. The Roger Schmidt era, which had given Die Werkself a firm on-pitch identity, fell to pieces and the club dropped the ball badly in appointing Tayfun Korkut as his successor – at exactly the point where a strong personality was needed to...
It is 40 years since Kevin Keegan’s groundbreaking move to Hamburg, one that blazed a trail for economic freedom, celebrity and today’s superstars“A limousine whisked me off for an appearance on Match of the Day. Then I went to the Sportsman Club for dinner with a sheikh who wanted to name a racehorse after me ... I set off for the NEC in Birmingham for a personal appearance at a toy fair; then it was straight back to London for talks with a film producer ...”Just how big was Kevin Keegan when Kevin Keegan was big? The answer to this question is simple: Keegan was very big. Toy fairs big. Sheikhs big. So big that even daring to ask that...
‘Lucky Luca’ Waldschmidt popped up with a late winner to sink Wolfsburg and spark wild scenes in Hamburg, as HSV avoided the relegation play-off“No, HSV haven’t won the championship,” said the voiceover on ZDF’s Das Aktuelle Sportstudio as they rolled footage of jubilant Hamburg SV supporters streaming on to the Volksparkstadion pitch. “They’ve stayed up.” There may be widespread incredulity around Germany as to just what constitutes success for the 1983 European Cup winners these days, but very few among the 57,000 sell-out crowd on Saturday cared about that. It had been the latest improbable moment in what has become an improbable role that HSV play in the Bundesliga. The little-used Luca Waldschmidt had come on as substitute in the...
HSV’s malaise has run deep this season, and it will need a real shift in terms of collective responsibility to avoid a season’s end as ruinous as its start“This is something that can’t be allowed to happen, but it has happened.” Just when life starts to look good again, along come Bayern Munich. Or more specifically in Hamburg’s case, a trip to Munich to face them in the Allianz Arena. Among a squad of shell-shocked players, few seemed quite as humbled as the captain, Gotoku Sakai, after Saturday’s 8-0 drubbing by Bayern. In terms of even recent historical perspective, it was hardly a coupon-buster. Starting from 2010, Hamburg’s reverses on their visits to Bayern have been by the scores of...
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,...