Nevermind: It's only the league
Six days before the big cup-final in Berlin our boys travelled to Munich for a training session on Sunday. Former Borussia-coach Ottmar Hitzfeld had invited the black'n'yellows boys for a friendly to Bavaria's most impressive arena named after an insurance company. German FA then decided to place the game into the Bundesliga schedule. And named dentist turned new-age-guru Markus Merk, who will be parting ways with Bundesliga after this season, referee for this 90s classic for the very last time. Dr. Reinhard Rauball, German Pro League Boss and Borussia chairman, however kept the league-match information under his belt.
For this friendly Bayern Munich, three days after an impressive comeback at Madrid's pride Getafe, did without the likes of Frank Ribery, Miroslav Klose, Mark van Bommel and Lucio. The handsome four were replaced by Lukas Podolski, Andreas Ottl, Willi Sagnol and Daniel van Buyten. Dortmunds master of ceremony Thomas Doll accidentally had told long-injured Roman Weidenfeller he was back in the starting 11. Thus Weidenfeller slipped and twisted his knee. He will now miss the rest of the season. So much disputed Marc Ziegler had the insolvable task of keeping a clean sheet in front of Germany's Best Defense - namely: Mats Hummels, Christian Wörns, Leonardo Dede and Philipp Degen, who was cleared to play just in time for the Bayern match. Doll had also banned out of form Federico, who logically was replaced by sleepless Nelson Valdez on the right flank. The South-American talent during the week admitted he suffers from insonmia, due to Dortmund supporters' disrespectful behaviour after last weeks substitution against Leverkusen. "I was not able to sleep til half five in the morning", he claimed in an interview with Reviersport. Valdez was accompanied by Sebastian Kehl, who's memories of Munich go back to Hassen "Brazzo" Salihamidzic stealing him one season with a few minutes into the 2006/2007 season, Tinga and Florian Kringe. Up front Doll fielded Alex Frei and Mladen Petric.
When the game kicked off at 5pm it was still 0-0. After the clock had turned twice, Dortmund was one down, some five minutes later they were two down, after eighteen it was 3-0 to Bayern and with less than a quarter of the match played Bayern were leading 4-0. What had happened? We can only guess. And all of those guesses would lead directly to Sylvie van der Vaart's birthday party the night before. Like Günther Netzer once sneaked out of Madrid to fly to Sinatra's birthday celebration, the black'n'yellows must have spend the night in Hamburg's "Elblounge". Podolski curled the first one into the net from outside the box, Ze Roberto then finished off from five meters, Tinga layed the third goal up for Luca Toni and Ze Roberto did so on goal number four, making it 18 league goals for Italian sunnyboy Luca Toni. Poor Ziegler watched the balls fly past him and every Dortmund player but Tinga stood aside. A German paper compared them to dustbins and they were not wrong. Tinga however was enjoying the match. The Brazilian star passed to Luca Toni, Ottl, Lell and all of his other teammates. Meanwhile on the right flank Philipp Degen and Nelson Valdez outbid each other in clumsiness and stubborn boredom. Petric and Frei dreamed of Europe while Kringe and Kehl sat their unique pace. Remember: This was a friendly! No hard feelings. Re-born Sepp Herberger in the meantime starred onto the white chalk line in front of him, thought about the "Elblounge" and the gangplanks of Hamburg. After 35 minutes Borussia were awarded a corner by Markus Merk. Mats Hummels, on loan from Bayern, jumped into the ball so did Titan Kahn. The veteran took this incident as his lame excuse to stay inside the dressing room at half time
Frustated Doll substituted Petric and Hummels during halft time and brought Robert Kovac and Diego Klimovicz onto the pitch. They did not change anything. Bayern had reclusively decided to shift down a few gears to get somewhere near to Borussia's performance. Kovac walked past most of the Munich players, passed the ball nicely to Florian Kringe. But Kringe was not able to get his foot in there and the ball went wide. We were into the 50s by then and this was the first and only decent break we got during the game. A few minutes later Podolski won a ball against Philipp "Flip" Degen, passed it back to Ottl. His poor shot did pass Marc Ziegler and hit the back of the net for a 5-0 lead. Now it was Kuba-time. The Polish international was allowed to take part in this historic friendly for the final minutes. He only made his second appearance on the back end of this season after being sidelined due to muscle injuries. Tinga, Ze Roberto and Markus Merk then fulfilled their gentleman's agreement. The Ref presented fifth yellow cards to both of them in the dying seconds of the match. Giving the Brazilians the chance to recover. Merk then decided it was time to part ways. The match was over
"I am devasted. They literally destroyed us. We lacked everything a Bundesliga team can lack", said flabbergasted 42year-old Thomas Doll after he had been told that this game actually was an official league game and continued "I don't think about the cup final right now. We have league match in front of us on Wednesday. We will analyze this game two fisted and see who get's out of this alive". Mladen Petric added: "We hid our real face today and will return stronger than ever on Saturday" Before hitting the road to Berlin, Borussia invites Hannover to steal three points from Westfalenstadion. The Lower-Saxonias stayed on top of Eintracht Frankfurt after a last minute goal from Christian Schulz reinforcing their 10th place in the league table. They will have to do without Pinto, who was sent off for the second time in 60 days - only the sixth player in Bundesliga history to do so. After the match, a black'n'yellow snake will curl towards Berlin forgetting about the twilight zone for a while. Remember: It was only a friendly! Anyways, Sepp Herberger would be proud of Doll and his boys.
Statistics
Bayern München: Kahn (46. Rensing) - Lell, van Buyten, Demichelis, Lahm - Ottl, Zé Roberto - Sagnol (61. Kroos), Schweinsteiger (70. Sosa) - Podolski, Toni
Coach: Ottmar Hitzfeld
BVB: Ziegler (5) - Degen (6), Hummels (6) (46. Kovac (4)), Wörns (6), Dede (5) - Tinga (6), Kehl (6) - Valdez (5) (73. Kuba), Kringe (6) - Frei (4), Petric (6) (46. Klimowicz (5))
Coach: Thomas Doll
(Marks: 1=world class, 2=did very well, 3=performance was ok, 4=not enough but not too bad at all, 5=not worth the money, 6=should pay money for playing football)
Goals: 1-0 Podolski (3., left-footed, assist: Toni), 2-0 Zé Roberto (8., left-footed, Lahm), 3-0 Toni (18., right-footed, Sagnol), 4-0 Toni (22., right-footed, Zé Roberto), 5-0 Ottl (67., right-footed, Podolski)
Yellow cards: Ze Roberto / Tinga
Referee: Dr Merk
Attendance: 69.000 (Allianz Arena, sold out)
Steph, 14.04.2008
