Reuters Soccer Blog

Soccer Break Monday

Hello everyone at the start of this new week, where before we talk Champions League and give a reminder of the weekend’s action, there’s news of another foreign takeover.

Arsenal are not enduring the easiest of times on the pitch but on Monday announced that American billionaire Stan Kroenke is taking over the club. Arsenal fans, what are your thoughts? Will this new era usher in drastic changes such as a new manager?

For a weekend recap, the title races in Italy and France look like being the closest, although Manchester United’s pursuers in the Premier League did their best to keep things interesting, and in La Liga Barcelona would appear to have the title won though with several clashes against Real Madrid coming up you never know.

Elsewhere Louis van Gaal was sacked as Bayern Munich coach after a double-winning 2010. The Bavarians are set to hand over their Bundesliga crown, either to leaders Borussia Dortmund or Bayer Leverkusen who again narrowed the gap at the top over the weekend to just five points.

The best of Monday’s football is a Premier League cracker between Manchester City and Liverpool. The Anfield club were rocked by Steven Gerrard’s injury and the news on Friday that he’ll miss the season, though they have other injury worries and are looking nervously over their shoulder as they aim for a European berth for next season.

Looking ahead to this week’s Champions League matches, and Man United v Chelsea looks to be the only tie left in the balance. Here’s an interesting read on Alex Ferguson’s side, whose success is largely down to their scouting policy and the constant influx of talented youngsters into the club.

Finally, here are some transfer rumours to get you talking.

No name calling just yet please, say Leverkusen

So they lost their first match of the season and dropped back three points from the top.

Big deal says Bayer Leverkusen coach Jupp Heynckes after their 3-2 loss to Nuremberg on Sunday. He is quick to reject any of the tags that Leverkusen have had to deal with for much of the past 15 years, like “Neverkusen” and “Vizekusen”.

“That is irritating, but I cannot defend myself against such voices,” Heynckes said of the nicknames that are now more frequently used in the media following the first defeat.

“What exactly happened here?”, he told reporters on Monday. “Nothing. We were top of the table until the 24th matchday and then we just lost one match because we were not well positioned in our defence.”

Long a team with huge potential, they became branded as the ultimate underachievers when they lost — in just a matter of weeks — the German Cup, German League and the Champions League final in 2002.

That became known as the “Treble Horror”. Four times they finished second in the Bundesliga from 1997 to 2002. In both the 2000 and 2002 Bundesliga runs they had the title within their grasp only to let go in the last matches of the season.

This season though they have almost always managed to dig themselves out of difficult situations.

Heynckes turning talented Leverkusen into title contenders

The qualities of the young Leverkusen team were already evident last season. Under Bruno Labbadia, they were exciting to watch for the first half of the campaign but crumbled after the winter break to end up in ninth.

New boss Jupp Heynckes seems to be succeeding where Labbadia failed.

Undefeated and boasting the league’s best attack and defence, they have every right to dream of the Bundesliga title that has eluded them for so long.

Heynckes’ experience and his winning pedigree, including the Champions League with Real Madrid, has helped instil the mental steel needed to turn a losing position around.

His insistence on tall strikers has paid off with interest. After taking over he quickly benched in-form Greece international Fanis Gekas, a former Bundesliga top scorer, and put his faith in the attacking partnership of Stefan Kiessling and Swiss Eren Derdiyok.

Both tall and strong, they are a world apart from Gekas and already have a combined goal tally of 21.

Leverkusen have also shrugged off the absence of striker Patrick Helmes, injured since the start of the season, and captain Simon Rolfes, sidelined by yet another knee injury.

Leverkusen lead and Schalke sparkle in Bundesliga

If anyone had said at the start of the season that a pensioner fresh out of retirement would steer perennial underachievers Bayer Leverkusen to the top of the Bundesliga at the halfway mark, they would have been called mad.

If they had also reckoned that Schalke 04 would be hot on their heels, they’d be thought of as even crazier.

Yet this is the state of play in Germany going into the three-week winter break at the end of the year.

Jupp Heynckes, who had retired before doing his former club Bayern Munich a favour by taking over from sacked coach Juergen Klinsmann in the final five matches last season to help grab a Champions League spot, decided to give it another go when he was asked to coach exciting Leverkusen.

The team, spearheaded by a young and attack-minded core of players including Stefan Kiessling, Patrick Helmes, Tranquillo Barnetta, Toni Kroos and Arturo Vidal, were already explosive at times last year. What they lacked was consistency.

With the addition of experienced Heynckes and veteran central defender Sami Hyypia, Leverkusen have blossomed. Even the injury to Helmes in the summer that left the striker out for several months did not affect them with Swiss international Eren Derdiyok stepping in to gracefully fill the void in attack.

They are unbeaten in the league and have the best offensive and defensive records.

German football end-of-season special

One of the best Bundesliga seasons I can remember came to a disappointing end in Saturday’s DFB-Pokal final. 

While the league gave us two great stories with the rise and fall of Hoffenheim and the ultimate triumph of Wolfsburg, the Cup final was a damp affair.

In the two posts below, Erik Kirschbaum reflects on Werder Bremen’s victory in the frightened rabbit final, while Karolos Grohmann considers the record of Bayer ‘Neverkusen’.

Werder win ‘scared rabbit’ final

Unless you happen to be a Werder Bremen fan, you’d probably agree with the rest of Germany that Werder’s 1-0 win over Bayer Leverkusen in Saturday’s Cup final made for a deflating end to the season.

Germans have a term for it: “Angsthasen Fussball” (scared rabbit football) — an appropriate description for a fear-filled struggle between two of Germany’s biggest underachievers this year, doing everything they could to avoid one last defeat before the holidays.

That was a shame because Werder and Leverkusen are both capable of lighting up the scoreboard when they stay true to their attacking styles.

I’m an unabashed fan of the “DFB Pokal” (German Cup) and the atmosphere for the final each May in Berlin’s Olympiastadion in the company of 70-odd thousand fans is something I really look forward to. (It’s a wonderful stadium when it’s sold out, which rarely happens for Hertha Berlin.)

The final two years ago between Nuremberg and then-Bundesliga champions Stuttgart, won 3-2 by Nuremberg in extra time, was a classic Cup final — arguably the match of the season. But the 2009 final was a real dud.

“We’re all deeply relieved,” said Bremen sporting director Klaus Allofs, whose team were considered among the pre-season favourites for the Bundesliga but finished 10th. “There would have been a very bitter after taste if we had also lost the German Cup final after losing the UEFA Cup final.”

Bremen’s fears were understandable after the pain of their defeat by Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk in Istanbul and Bayer Leverkusen fans would have know just how they felt (see the post from Karolos below).

Bayer Leverkusen and the hunt for lost trophies

When Bayer Leverkusen, 1-0 down in the German Cup final against Werder Bremen, desperately poured forward in search of a late equaliser, somehow you knew there was no way they would turn this round.******They ended up losing another final on the same day their former midfielder Michael Ballack, who has also missed or lost everything there is to lose in football, including World Cup, European Championship and Champions League finals, was lifting the FA Cup with Chelsea after beating Everton.******But for Leverkusen it was more of the same bitter story of the past 12 years.******In 2002 they famously let slip a “treble”, losing in the Champions League final to Real Madrid, choking over the final three matches of the league to end up second to Borussia Dortmund and losing the German Cup final against Schalke.******Since 1997 they’ve finished second in the Bundesliga four times, most painfully in 2000 when a Ballack own goal against Unterhaching cost them the title on the last day.******That’s why they are called “Vize-kusen”.******Hold on, some might say. They have been to two Cup finals, fought for the Bundesliga four times and almost won the Champions League. There are not many teams out there who can boast to have done all that in such a short period.******That is true. But do these seven near-misses count more than Borussia Dortmund’s one Champions League win? Are they more precious than Schalke’s solitary UEFA Cup win? Or newly-crowned Bundesliga champions VfL Wolfsburg’s one and only trophy?******Whether fairly or not, no one apart from the Werkself fans themselves will remember Bayer’s almost-seven titles, nor will there be anything to display in the trophy cabinet.******Leverkusen keeper Rene Adler had a hard time fighting back the tears after the final whistle:***

“It is difficult to say anything meaningful. Second place, you don’t get anything for that. Second place is the first loser. It’s terribly bitter. Vizekusen is just a word. It is a shame it was again confirmed tonight.”

***

PHOTO: Bayer Leverkusen’s Michael Ballack walks past the European Cup after his team lost the Champions League final against Real Madrid at Hampden Park. May 15, 2002. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach