Max Kruse’s hat-trick brought relief at the Weserstadion, but questions over the club’s long-term – and even medium-term – plan remain“It doesn’t matter who scores the goals,” said Max Kruse on Thursday, and it sounded like he believed it. Yet even if it doesn’t quite mean everything, it means a lot. That much was evident after he retired to the bench a few minutes from the end from Werder Bremen’s emphatic 4-0 win over Hannover on Sunday, their first of the season, having hit a hat-trick – his first goals of the season. Kruse goofed around, whooping and pulling faces at the television cameras. The supporters’ relief was palpable. Not just at the result, but at their star forward taking...
Peter Bosz’s side let slip a 2-0 lead at Frankfurt as injuries and suspensions hit the backline in a Bundesliga season that is opening up into a three-way fightAfter Borussia Dortmund threw away a two-goal lead at Eintracht Frankfurt and were forced to settle for a draw, the journey home proved pretty memorable, too. With the motorway closed, and the team coach and fans alike stuck in traffic, near the town of Haiger, two dozen or so supporters took it on themselves to serenade the stationary team bus with an impromptu rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone. Gänsehaut – goose bumps, Dortmund said. Following Die Schwarzgelben is rarely dull.There was the entertaining heavy metal football under Jürgen Klopp, they scored...
The passion from both sets of fans remains undimmed, but the question is whether the teams will get away with underachieving again this seasonEven by the standards of local tussles and their particular intensity, it wasn’t much of a spectacle. Pundit Lothar Matthäus told the Sky audience that Saturday’s 107th top-flight Nordderby between Hamburg and Werder Bremen “didn’t deserve a sold-out stadium” – nearly 55,000 were there – but what did anybody expect? These two grand old clubs have been on the train leaving Worried, headed for Desperate, for a while and after this fractious encounter, neither look like taking a diversion soon.For HSV, who had a muted celebration of the club’s 130th birthday on Friday, it was tougher to...
A 5-0 thrashing at Dortmund could have been worse, even with a dubious VAR decision, and there are already fears of a situation spinning out of controlJörg Schmadtke rushed out to the Sky truck in the TV compound to pore over every possible angle – and to check his eyes weren’t deceiving him. By that point, the Köln sporting director had already been on the Signal Iduna Park pitch, shoulder to shoulder with the coach, Peter Stöger, protesting to the referee, Patrick Ittrich, over the award by VAR of Borussia Dortmund’s second goal. Before any more fingers start pointing at Effzee about an anarchic end to a chaotic week, we should add that this was a reasonable moment for both...
Nobody is expecting Max Kruse to really become an angel, but seeing him in the white of Germany doesn’t seem that daft any morePerhaps, in years to come, it will be looked upon as one of the anomalies in the history of collectible football toys. When the DfB commissioned Lego figures of Germany’s Euro 2016 squad, the list was compiled months before Jogi Löw made his final choices. So alongside Manuel Neuer, Thomas Müller and Mario Götze was a figure of the injured Marco Reus, for example.There is also one in the collection that sticks out if you look at Lego’s squad today, or if you’re browsing for spares on eBay – that of No23, one Max Kruse. Dropped by...