Tag: 2021/22

086 Can we play you every week?

Can we play you every week?
 
Happy New Year everyone! Just when we thought we’d have to go into relegation battle mode, grateful for every measly, undeserved point we are gifted, along come Bayern Munich and make us feel good about ourselves again. Thank you, folks, always a pleasure, and we’re only too happy to discuss the match in great detail. 
 
Other topics this time: a cursory summary of the three last games of the annus horribilis 2021, developments on the transfer market, financial problems our club could be facing and possibly unpleasant solutions to these, as well as a possible new “core team” for the 2nd half of the season.
 
Legendary Goal: Patrick Herrmann’s second goal against our next opponent Leverkusen in the legendary 6:3 away win on 29th August, 2010, his third of altogether 46 goals in the Bundesliga for the best club in the world in his now 83 years at Borussia Mönchengladbach. Our first away win in Leverkusen in 16 years marked the start of one of those traumatic free falls that Mönchengladbach fans have to cope with every now and again, but that’s another story.

Credit: Intro/Outro-Musik von Nomoredolls, Electric Sheep, http://www.jamendo.com/de/track/275278/electric-sheep
Topic-Jingle: Apple/Garageband

Borussia,Mönchengladbach,Fanpodcast,2021/22,Bayern,Rueckrunde,Manuel,Alexis

085 Temporarily (?) out of order!

Temporarily (?) out of order
 
Borussia Moenchengladbach NUUUUULL – Freiburg SECHS … seven days after cruising to a four nil win against puny Fürth, our current squad lose the prestigious derby against a limited but hard-working Cologne team in the final fifteen minutes after suffering a nervous breakdown and conceding three goals.
The weekend after that, they go ahead and ruin Christmas, the whole season and maybe even more with a historical nightmare day at the office wherein they concede six highly avoidable, bordering on slapstick, goals at home in 36 minutes against a worthy but unspectacular opponent.
 
How could such a talented bunch of young men playing for probably the best club in the world fall apart like that a mere five weeks after destroying Bayern Munich 5:0 (see Vollraute Abroad no. 84)? Was it a freak accident, or rather a bone-chilling harbinger of developments to come? Is there a pattern there? Whose fault is it anyway? Where did it all go wrong?
 
The circumstances may be beyond our control, but you can count on us (Manuel, Alexis, Kurtz, George Best) to gaze unflinchingly into the abyss and come up with an explanation more elaborate than “the horror, the horror”.
 
Sorry, no legendary goal this podcast. We weren’t in the mood
Credit: Intro/Outro-Musik von Nomoredolls, Electric Sheep, http://www.jamendo.com/de/track/275278/electric-sheep
Topic-Jingle: Apple/Garageband

084 Borussia Moenchengladbach FUENF - Muenchen NUUUUULL

We are a bit blasé about it in our recording, but we have to admit that Borussia Mönchengladbach, very probably the best club in the world, produced a magnificent performance, a work of art and infinite beauty, a lesson to others that will stand the test of time.

Bayern Munich, who have been gallavanting around Europe and Germany recently, spreading shock and awe and refusing to score less than four goals per match in the Bundesliga and Champions League, were thoroughly and comprehensively beaten, thumped, dissected, annhilated, made a laughing stock and sent home crying for Mummy in the second round of the German Cup. We were too fast, too good, too aggressive for them. From now on, they can just send the points to us in an envelope.

Joshua Kimmich was on the verge of tears and forgot to whine about unfair treatment; Manuel Neuer was too distraught to claim offside after he was made to look a fool for goal 3 and nutmegged for goal 4; Thomas Müller, for once, lost his jovial demeanour and could only stammer that he had never been so humiliated in his entire career at Bayern. Aaaah, a memory to savour for all eternity, a reason to grin smugly and condescendingly the next time we meet Uli Hoeneß.

Oh yes, and we also talk about three Bundesliga matches against mediocre teams that didn’t go so well, too. And we preview Friday evening’s match against Mainz.

The Legendary Goal is also a work of art, a thunderbolt that woke us from ten years of rubbish football, that still brings tears of joy to every Moenchengladbach supporter: Marco Reus’ first Bundesliga goal for the Masters of the (Football) Universe, against Mainz on 28th August 2009, an epic solo, the first of many until he succumbed to the Dark Side and joined the Forces of Evil.
https://www.bundesliga.com/de/bundesliga/news/bvb-borussia-dortmund-monchengladbach-marco-reus-tor-premiere-zehn-jahre-6594

Credit: Intro/Outro-Musik von Nomoredolls, Electric Sheep, http://www.jamendo.com/de/track/275278/electric-sheep
Topic-Jingle: Apple/Garageband

083 Marco who

Marco who?

So … we thought we would be reduced to feeble attempts at scorning Marco Whatshisname for … what was it we were angry about again? We were prepared to spit venom and spew bile after three depressing performances and subsequent humiliating defeats. We had been planning to do our own version of the BBC’s “Just a minute” for all three of the last matches, except without the humour or wit.

But instead, we offer you a fun-packed and fantastically entertaining podcast filled with razor-sharp analysis, breathtaking insights and lots of “I told you so”‘s, with sprinkles of “as I said a couple of weeks ago”, as we delve into the matches that brought victories against two German Champions League contenders: The Forces Of Evil (a.k.a. Borussia Dortmund) and the Bundesliga’s hardest, most physically intimidating and unfairest team (not club), Wolfsburg. (There might have been another match since we last recorded, but we don’t remember the result, and we doubt our team even turned up.) It seems as if Adi Hütter has found the magic formula to make everything click into place. Join us to find out what he did right.

The Legendary Goal comes from Václav Svěrkoš, another of our frustrating, underperforming strikers, who had occasional moments of glory (in this case in the third round of the German Cup in 2003 against VfB Stuttgart) for which we still love him to death: “Svěrkoooooooooš!!!”.
Credit: Intro/Outro-Musik von Nomoredolls, Electric Sheep, http://www.jamendo.com/de/track/275278/electric-sheep
Topic-Jingle: Apple/Garageband

082 What a difference a match makes

And the difference is a win at home! 90 short minutes (plus injury time) and those moments of bliss, those thrilling Denis Zakaria runs, brought us our first win of the season. As Dinah Washington would undoubtedly agree, there’s nothing better than three points in the league, and we definitely prefer a win against relegation-battling Bielefeld to an epic draw against the serial Bundesliga champions.

In our view, this warrants a euphoric, over-the-top 3-hour-special, but we have painstakingly edited the podcast down to our standard smoothly and professionally executed 30 minutes. Forget the peevishness and ill-humour of our last podcast and join us to celebrate (I’ll say it again) Denis Zakaria, as well as superhero Capitano Lars Stindl. Honourable mentions are made of some of our talented young new team members who gave it their all. Brows are furrowed as we wonder why Fabian Neuhaus can’t stop playing those kamikaze passes. It’s Alexis’ turn to recount what it was like to be in the half-full Nordpark stadium. (Spoiler: It was fantastic!)

Oh yes, there’s a quick preview of our next match, away to Augsburg (groan!), a team not unlike (shudder!) Union Berlin.

“Legendary goals” tries to settle the delicate nerves of Borussia Mönchengladbach fans by featuring Lars Stindl’s goal against Augsburg in 2015. (Lars must be thrilled to bits that he is second only to Juan Arango in the Legendary Goals hitparade!)

Credit: Intro/Outro-Musik von Nomoredolls, Electric Sheep, http://www.jamendo.com/de/track/275278/electric-sheep
Topic-Jingle: Apple/Garageband

081 Oh, good grief, Charlie Brown!

Boo! Nothing compares to that sinking feeling you get when you realize on match day three that your team are going to have ANOTHER “difficult” season, just like the last one. The same players as last year (and the year before that) seem to be committed to making the same mistakes again and again and again (individually and collectively), despite having a brand new, hitherto successful and highly regarded new coach to work with. (Wait a moment, that sounds familiar somehow.)

This time around, the nightmarish afternoon in Leverkusen and the dismal display in Berlin make the memory of the epic performance against Bayern Munich fade into insignificance. In a valiant effort to keep you entertained, informed and addicted to our podcast, we struggle to come up with new thoughts or at least words to talk about the chronic “Mönchengladbach disease”. Find out if we succeed.

Other topics: how it felt to be in the Nordpark stadium again (against Bayern Munich), developments on the transfer market, and the upcoming match against Bielefeld.

This time around, the legendary goal was scored in Bielefeld and the ball defied the laws of physics but not because the scorer commanded it to (so for once it can`t be by Juan Arango). No, it is in fact our star striker of 1997, Andrzey Juskowiak, who somehow manages to bundle the ball into goal twice. Witness the slapstick and hear about the amazing facts and statistics behind our first away win of that season. And enjoy the streaker. (You don’t see that on television anymore!)

Credit: Intro/Outro-Musik von Nomoredolls, Electric Sheep, http://www.jamendo.com/de/track/275278/electric-sheep
Topic-Jingle: Apple/Garageband

080 Oh yes, let them beguine, make them play

Begin the season!

Hooray! Nothing can beat the adrenalin rush that comes with the start of a new season (no matter what went on the season before). Especially when your team begins the beguine with a win in the domestic cup. We discuss the hard-fought 1:0 at the Betzenberg, no mean feat when taking into account its infamous atmosphere, its braying fans and Kaiserslautern’s traditional “robust” style of play.

Other topics: what our boys did in their summer holidays (at Euro 2020, that is), new team members and possible developments on the transfer market, the first match of the season on Friday against Bayern Munich (a must-win, of course). We also go off on a few tangents and dwell on “failed players” and first matches of the season against Bayern Munich.

This time around, the legendary goal was scored in Kaiserslautern and the ball defied the laws of physics (so it can only be by Juan Arango). In keeping with the wistfulness in the lyrics of the Cole Porter classic, we share our bitter-sweet memories of the match.

“Oh yes, let them begin the beguine, make them play.”

Legendary goal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=202YBohR9vc

Credit: Intro/Outro-Musik von Nomoredolls, Electric Sheep, http://www.jamendo.com/de/track/275278/electric-sheep
Topic-Jingle: Apple/Garageband