German football season 2023/24

Wee Baby Seamus

Yo, Goober, where's the meat?
Mar 15, 2011
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Leverkusen showing Dortmund today that you can still play to win in a BuLi match even with a European final coming in a few weeks. Makes them look even worse.
Leverkusen have something to play for, Dortmund have literally nothing at all.

Makes total sense to me that BVB would give minutes to guys who don't get many, and it doesn't look bad at all to anyone watching with a shred of brain
 

TheMoreYouKnow

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May 3, 2007
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Leverkusen have something to play for, Dortmund have literally nothing at all.

Makes total sense to me that BVB would give minutes to guys who don't get many, and it doesn't look bad at all to anyone watching with a shred of brain
What do Leverkusen have to play for? They've been champions for weeks. A meaningless 'undefeated season' that buys you nothing (this isn't the NFL). A rational manager would never be influenced by that. And unlike Dortmund (whose final is in June) they actually have *two* finals coming up in the next two weeks, so they'd have much more of a reason to take it easy.

Besides they could have just played for a draw if they wanted to preserve the streak given that Bochum would happily have taken a point here as that would have given them safety.

The reason Leverkusen plays for the win here is the same reason they are champions. They have balls unlike the black and yellow clowns in Dortmund.
 

Wee Baby Seamus

Yo, Goober, where's the meat?
Mar 15, 2011
15,250
6,169
Halifax/Toronto
What do Leverkusen have to play for? They've been champions for weeks. A meaningless 'undefeated season' that buys you nothing (this isn't the NFL). A rational manager would never be influenced by that. And unlike Dortmund (whose final is in June) they actually have *two* finals coming up in the next two weeks, so they'd have much more of a reason to take it easy.

Besides they could have just played for a draw if they wanted to preserve the streak given that Bochum would happily have taken a point here as that would have given them safety.

The reason Leverkusen plays for the win here is the same reason they are champions. They have balls unlike the black and yellow clowns in Dortmund.
Why don't you ask the Leverkusen players if they care about the undefeated season? They were going through against Roma from the 82nd minute onward last week, and yet pushed even harder in the subsequent 16 minutes to get the on-the-day draw. They clearly care. Idk what your point about the NFL is, but these players clearly think their (fully unprecedented) undefeated season is anything but meaningless.

All of which has nothing to do with it being utterly logical that Terzic would see a game where it did not matter if Dortmund won 10-0 or lost 10-0, think "this is a great moment to give minutes to guy who haven't had many", and do so. Not "lacking in balls" or whatever garbage.
 

TheMoreYouKnow

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May 3, 2007
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Why don't you ask the Leverkusen players if they care about the undefeated season? They were going through against Roma from the 82nd minute onward last week, and yet pushed even harder in the subsequent 16 minutes to get the on-the-day draw. They clearly care. Idk what your point about the NFL is, but these players clearly think their (fully unprecedented) undefeated season is anything but meaningless.

All of which has nothing to do with it being utterly logical that Terzic would see a game where it did not matter if Dortmund won 10-0 or lost 10-0, think "this is a great moment to give minutes to guy who haven't had many", and do so. Not "lacking in balls" or whatever garbage.
Again, they didn't need to win 5-0 to have an undefeated season. Do you think Bochum playing with 10 men from the early stages of the game would not have taken a draw here quite happily given they knew they needed exactly one point?

Dortmund can rest some players - Leverkusen did too quite obviously - and still put up a fight. You don't need to wave a white flag just because you have an important match in three weeks' time. But the problem with that team has always been their lack of resolve, which is why they could never get past Bayern in the last decade. Resolve, courage, balls...call it what you want, but Dortmund showed a complete lack of it..once again this weekend. Sure, they defended for their lives against PSG and booked a place in the Final, the best thing they've done since Klopp left, but who wants to bet on them winning it? I know I wouldn't.
 

Albatros

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Aug 19, 2017
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It's also not exactly shocking that no one wants to get injured right before the Champions League final when there's as good as nothing else left to play for. Mainz played well and earned what they got, while Bochum dug their own hole with the early red card.
 

TheMoreYouKnow

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May 3, 2007
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It's also not exactly shocking that no one wants to get injured right before the Champions League final when there's as good as nothing else left to play for. Mainz played well and earned what they got, while Bochum dug their own hole with the early red card.
"right before"? The Mainz-Dortmund match took place on May 11th, the CL final is on June 1st. That's enough time to fit in an international tournament. If you can't be a professional and do your job three weeks before another match because you think trying too hard might get you injured, you're in the wrong line of work.
 

Wee Baby Seamus

Yo, Goober, where's the meat?
Mar 15, 2011
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Halifax/Toronto
"right before"? The Mainz-Dortmund match took place on May 11th, the CL final is on June 1st. That's enough time to fit in an international tournament. If you can't be a professional and do your job three weeks before another match because you think trying too hard might get you injured, you're in the wrong line of work.
okay but also it's good man management to give opportunities to guys who don't get minutes in games that don't matter.

you're so uniquely focused on the "they're resting players!?!?!?!?!?" and not paying any attention to the "minutes for squad players" aspect.

BVB's starting lineup and their 'minutes played' rank for BVB in the BuLi this year:

Bynoe Gittens (15) - Moukoko (21) - Malen (7)
Nmecha (17) - Ozcan (13) - Reus (9)
Morey (26) - Schlotterbeck (1) - Sule (10) - Wolf (14)
Meyer (20)

when there are no stakes to a match, give guys who would normally get 10 minutes at the end of a match a full game!
 

TheMoreYouKnow

Registered User
May 3, 2007
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38° N 77° W
okay but also it's good man management to give opportunities to guys who don't get minutes in games that don't matter.

you're so uniquely focused on the "they're resting players!?!?!?!?!?" and not paying any attention to the "minutes for squad players" aspect.

BVB's starting lineup and their 'minutes played' rank for BVB in the BuLi this year:

Bynoe Gittens (15) - Moukoko (21) - Malen (7)
Nmecha (17) - Ozcan (13) - Reus (9)
Morey (26) - Schlotterbeck (1) - Sule (10) - Wolf (14)
Meyer (20)

when there are no stakes to a match, give guys who would normally get 10 minutes at the end of a match a full game!
I'm not saying it's wrong to rotate, Bayer did that, most of the top 4-5 clubs routinely do so. I'm saying that the performance was obviously very unmotivated and flat, which is an indictment of the manager whose job it is to get the team ready to play and the players who didn't do their jobs.

And that's pretty amazing if you consider that by the very definition of it these for the most part aren't guys with their playing time in that Final guaranteed anyway. You'd think some of those rotation guys would be burning to prove their worth in games like this, instead they're trying to get by with minimal effort. Did that come from 'the top'? Who knows, but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the mentality of the team. And let's be real here, this is Dortmund, a team which has had repeated, sometimes inexplicable, breakdowns under Terzic.
 

Bon Esprit

Registered User
Jan 24, 2004
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Does anyone else find Nagelsmann's casting show-like behavior annoying?
Day after day he is dropping a new name of the roster. This is bush league level IMO.
 
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TheMoreYouKnow

Registered User
May 3, 2007
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Does anyone else find Nagelsmann's casting show-like behavior annoying?
Day after day he is dropping a new name of the roster. This is bush league level IMO.
I don't get it to be honest. I saw some headline about the 'reveal' and thought it's gotta be some kind of joke. But I don't know if it comes from Nagelsmann, it has a very "new DFB" smell to it.
 

cgf

FireBednarsSuccessor
Oct 15, 2010
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It's not unique ex-GDR thing. Back in the day the Frankfurt Adler front or the Dortmund Borussen front were ultra rights.
Today we recognize Hansa, the dynamos, lok and many others are ultra-rights (not all of them, but many)

It's not exclusive our problem, but now-a-days it is much more prevalent with ultras of clubs in the ex-DDR territories that still lag behind the rest of the country...as is polling for the AfD. So it's not uniquely our problem, but the scope of the problem is unique in the east...at least for Germany...
 

Albatros

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Aug 19, 2017
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"right before"? The Mainz-Dortmund match took place on May 11th, the CL final is on June 1st. That's enough time to fit in an international tournament. If you can't be a professional and do your job three weeks before another match because you think trying too hard might get you injured, you're in the wrong line of work.
Depends on the injury, you tear your ligaments or something and you're out.
 

Albatros

Registered User
Aug 19, 2017
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It's not exclusive our problem, but now-a-days it is much more prevalent with ultras of clubs in the ex-DDR territories that still lag behind the rest of the country...as is polling for the AfD. So it's not uniquely our problem, but the scope of the problem is unique in the east...at least for Germany...
Some clubs like Alemannia Aachen have clearly went the wrong way in the west as well in recent years. Outliers, but there are some. Especially Aachen in particular is a Nazi club at this point, and they were in the 1. Bundesliga less than 20 years ago.
 

cgf

FireBednarsSuccessor
Oct 15, 2010
60,572
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w/ Renly's Peach
Some clubs like Alemannia Aachen have clearly went the wrong way in the west as well in recent years. Outliers, but there are some. Especially Aachen in particular is a Nazi club at this point, and they were in the 1. Bundesliga less than 20 years ago.

Again, it's not the problem that's unique. It the prevalence of that particular problem. And look if we compare things with the US, UK, Italy, etc. even us Ossis look like the most hippy dippy of lefties...but compared to the rest of the country this is a problem that is more common in the former DDR territories.
 

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