Matchday Ten: The Swarm.

By: Scott | October 24th, 2009

Earlier this week, when Jupp Heynckes said that it was time to start showing the other side of Leverkusen, it never once occurred to me this is what he’d meant. Jupp hinted at showing us the offensive side. The side that takes the ball forward and keeps the goal counter clicking ever upwards. That free-flowing, scrappy side we all love so much about the Werkself, but that has been kept toned well down this season. And so I settled in at my preferred watering hole, in the corner that lets me pick up the open wifi from the café across the street, my company at kick-off a dozen or so loaded Americans in the sunrise stages of a bachelor party, and I ordered a pint and I waited. Rolfes and Augusto were out, but surely our subs were up to the task. Hot-diggity! Bring on the goals!

The Werkself ripped into the match, guns a-blazing. Not two minutes in, Lars Bender, getting his first start for Leverkusen and his first chance to go head-to-head against his brother Sven, launched an attack but just missed out on opening the scoring. Toni Kroos repeated the intentions moments later, but with the same results. We were not yet five minutes in and I was ready to celebrate. What would the final be? 2-0? 3-0? 4-0? Would Dortmund even get to touch the ball?

From the bachelor party crowd, nonsense was proliferating. Drunken words of people quite convinced their own weekend would be as fantastically wacky as The Hangover staggered into hearing range uninvited.

(“…best nudie bar is just down the street from here…”) jpeg-2n5a0632-20091023-img_22779828.onlineBild

Then something unexpected happened.

Bumble-bee knee-highs were moving the ball up the pitch, a cross to close range and Lucas Barrios put Dortmund on record as having ended Adler’s 370-odd minutes of clean sheet. Okay. So maybe the match would end 4-1. Such is my unwavering optimism.

Well, they certainly showed me!

(“… strippers on their website don’t even look that hot….”)

We spent most of that first half on the back heel, Hyypiä at the rear having a far more crucial role than Derdiyok and Kießling up front. Inaccurate passing and a shortage of creative play made the aforementioned absences of Rolfes and Augusto stand out like a sore knee. One up and not 20 minutes played, Dortmund had battened the hatches.

There was no World Cup jet-lag to blame this on, but it was only halftime. Things could change. I was still banking on the win: a more modest 2-1.

(“… I want to go skydiving tomorrow with a naked hooker strapped to my back….”)

After the break, it again briefly looked like the Werkself would bring the pain. The pace picked up, but too often it was slowed by a return trip to our own half. At 55 minutes, Gekas was brought on to (theoretically) add to our firing power. By the 65th minute, I had resigned myself to seeing our first loss, which is right about when acting-captain Manuel Friedrich brought us level with the visitors through a fine header off a set piece. In fact, despite having three men specifically assigned to the role of assaulting the Dortmund goal, it was Manuel Friedrich who seemed hungriest to beat Weidenfeller a second time.

(“… we need to go to the mall and buy camouflage. It’ll make paintball more fun…)

AdlerUnhappyvBVB

Friedrich’s passion sparked a bit of life in the squad, but it garnered no reward and didn’t last. Vidal, who was eventually swapped off for Reinartz with 8 minutes of regulation time to go, looked to have called it day early on. The energy shown by the youth brigade in the opening minutes had given way to self-doubt.

A draw was about as good as I could ask for, but that made it no less disappointing when the final whistle confirmed that a draw was all we were going to get. If I’d had my Owomoyela Miniman with me (a gift sent to me, unsolicited, by the DFB^[1] and which looks a lot more like Little Richard than it does the person its seeks to immortalize) I’d have snapped its head off like a spoiled child.

The match ended even for both sides, but the coach reactions paint a better picture.

Klopp: “We played well today.”
Heynckes “We did not play well today.”

In the week since our last draw, I had made peace with earning a single point. Hamburg, stripped of offensive abilities, left us facing an almost pure defensive side. Of course scoring would be difficult, and the situation at the top of the table would naturally lead us to be cautiously defensive ourselves. Any complaint over the point last week was unfounded. But this was Dortmund: a team just now finding their footing in the season. We could have and should have brought more to BayArena.

There is no mall in this city that sells camouflage. I’d wager the only places one could get such a thing around here is at an Army surplus store or off an unconscious Reservist. Come Sunday, the American bachelor-partiers will be heading home, the weekend adorned in unspoken disappointment; a patchwork of time and money ill-spent, noise complaints and vomit. Back in Germany, Hamburg will meet Schalke. Our immediate fate is tied directly to that match. Today we lead the league. Tomorrow is uncertain and our foothold at the top looks more fragile in this new light.

Worst-case scenario, Schalke beat Hamburg leaving us still tied for first (albeit with a new dance partner) and only a single point up on third. We will have immediate opportunity to correct that when the Werkself travel to Schalke next weekend. They’ll be all tuckered out from the Pokal play that we aren’t burdened by. That should bode well for us, but after yesterday’s performance I’ve got my first real doubts of the season. And so there will be no fanfare in wiping away this matchday from the Victory Beard.

BeardSpTg10

And speaking of Kießling, the quotes by Kießling’s agent that prompted a flurry of press on our striker being courted by the Gunners apparently date back to an interview done when Stefan was still with Nürnberg. There may well be some out-clause in the fine print, but the official word is that Kießling, contracted to Bayer through 2012 is quite happy where he is. Well, who wouldn’t be? 1bfc9d319b

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1 My guess is that the conversation that led to the Owomoyela Miniman finding its way to me went something like this:
“Also, send him a Miniman!”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know. Whatever’s not selling.”