A taste of things to come...

So, you've met the three of us and you've had a chance to settle in a little bit. So what can you expect from this blog? Our plan is to offer some regular features, as well as (hopefully) witty commentary and news. This weekend, look for a match reaction post and the start of our FC Hollywood Star of the Week (wherein each of us will write about our love for the same player each week). And there will likely be some macros and ridiculous graphics along the way. So welcome and enjoy the ride!

they don't grow on trees, you know - musings on the left back problem

The world class left back - just like the unicorn, it is ever elusive and quite possibly mythical.

Philipp Lahm has already expressed his willingness to switch back over to the left if need be and because he's Philipp Lahm, you know he'll do a good enough job like the energizer bunny that he is. However, the longer he's stayed on the right, the more that I've felt that that's the place for him. There needs to be a point where we just say hey, why don't you stay where you want to stay. I thought we had reached that point already but yet again, here we are.

So, let's take a look at some of our other options.

Holger Badstuber: is a natural center back and should stay there.

Luis Gustavo: Gustavo's versatility was certainly part of his allure when we signed him. He's a perfectly serviceable left back, if not particularly inspired. However, I see his future at Bayern as Herr Schweinsteiger's partner at CDM. It's where he's played best and it would be foolish to place him otherwise.

Danijel Pranjic: I shall refrain from saying any unladylike things that may or may not involve regurgitating the delicious fusilli all'arrabiata that I made earlier. Short answer - no, thank you.

Diego Contento: Oh hey remember this guy? Creative hair styles, loves espresso, quite chummy with our resident Frenchman? A blunder earlier in the season has seen Contento fall out of favor and injury problems have been just another obstacle in his way. Clearly he should have stolen the self-help book "The Best Way to Sacrifice Virgins to the Devil" from Pranjic's bedside table.

Contento is a tricky case because I get this uncomfortably queasy feeling at the thought of leaving him behind and shuffling him off. For a player who has been with Bayern as long as he has, I believe he's owed his due. Whether that's being given another chance under our new management or getting loaned out to gain experience (for Bayern or to pique the interest of another club willing to buy, perhaps), only time will tell.

'Lo! What's that in the rumor mill?

Fabio Coentrão: has been on our radar for yonks. Bayern has made noise about signing him before but backed off at the sight of his considerably high price tag. Now the rumor is making the rounds again. It could just be the football journalists getting bored because it's been a while since any decent sex scandal reared its ugly head (honestly, John Terry, time to step up your game). Still, if there's anything that I've learnt over the years, it's that in the world of transfers, anything is possible. I'm a great admirer of Coentrão's. After all, he was one of my first choices for my UEFA Champions League Fantasy Football Team this year, and is there any accolade greater than that? Surely not.

He's a talented young chap and should we somehow manage to pull this signing off, I'll welcome him with open arms, but I'm not going to get too fussed about it until we hear anything definite.

behold, a third blogger

Imagine this.

You’re a sophomore in high school in Northern California. You’re sitting across from your mother in your favorite Chinese restaurant and over a bowl of hot and sour soup, she tells you that you’re about to be uprooted to a city in a country that you had never even considered living in.

Flash forward several months. It’s a Saturday afternoon and you’re waiting on an U-Bahn platform with your parents. Now you’ve loved football just about all your life (although you’d always called it soccer). You spent the past summer cheering on Die Deutsche Fußballnationalmannschaft because there is nothing quite like the World Cup and it was so easy to get swept up in the fervor of a sport you loved and a national team that you had grown very fond of. You had watched a fair amount of club football but you’d never really felt all that strongly about any particular club.

The train arrives at the platform. You barely find space to stand because it’s chock full of excited fans dressed all in red. And all of a sudden you think “maybe.” You think “could this be?”

Yes, yes it could. FC Bayern München was the club you had been waiting for.

Five years later, I’m an international affairs student in Washington, DC but I still call Munich home. I swear in German, dream in Italian, and I’ll bleed red and white until the day I die.

The International Break: Musings of a Club Fan

I really do love cheering for the German NT. I do. It gives me the chance to root for players I like, but that don't play for Bayern. But internationals breaks, be they for friendlies or qualifiers or the World Cup, make me nervous. They stress me out. Because I am terrified that one of our players will get injured.

Bayern, as a club, boasts a ton of internationals. In fact, the German NT can be populated solely with players from Bayern, Dortmund, and Real Madrid (though you might have to find another club to get a keeper, though I'd argue Jorg still has the stuff!). Seven Bayern players play for the German NT (Schweinsteiger, Lahm, Muller, Klose, Kroos, Gomez, and Badstuber). Plus you have a Dutch international (Robben), a French international (Ribery), two Croatian internationals (Olic and Pranjic), a Belgium international (Van Buyten), etc, etc. So when the internationals go out, it's pretty much our entire starting line-up.

Due to an injury from the World Cup, we were without Arjen Robben for the first half of the season. So I have good reason to get a little bit nervous when the boys leave Sabener Strasse for various parts of Europe (with DeMichelis gone, it's less "the world" and definitely more "Europe").

But with all of that said, seeing Bastian Schweinsteiger wearing the armband for Germany is a sight that will never fail to make me very happy.

It begins at the beginning

It always starts so innocently.

One morning, you're up with your cup of tea, in your pajamas and casually watching a fuzzy stream and this continues on for a while until you find yourself up at the crack of dawn in your team jersey with the newest teamschaal (still in bed, natürlich), trying not to wake those you live with, having tiny heart attacks.

But never will you ask yourself "Why on earth am I still doing this" because, well, you are who you are and forget the rest.

I meandered into the world of FC Hollywood a year after following our fearless peroxided Vice Captain into the world of club football. A few trying draws, slide tackles from Captain van Bommel and I was sold.

I'm a student in Chicago (of the world, haaa ha, I'll be here all day). I've lived in many places and speak many languages rather poorly and I have a rather soft spot for the Dutchmen (past and present, especially past). I grew up in the Midwest, Chicago and Minnesota and find myself calling Lake Wobegone home.

For a bit of trivia: one of my favorite things about Bayern are the playlists during halftime and after matches and on the days Bayern can't seem to find the back of the net, we can always rely on Berni.

With the upcoming neuroscience module, i will probably be posting sporadically and rather disjointedly kind of like Daniel Pranjic's weekly performance, haaa.

Welcome! Vilkommen! Bienvenue! Bienvenidos!

You know those friends who, despite a complete lack of interest on the part of others, talk about a certain topic all the time? Yeah, we're those girls. At least when the topic is FC Bayern Munich.

On my part, this is an attempt to drive my friends and family a little less crazy (as, if it's written down, they have the option to either read it or not). If I'm writing about it, I may feel less of a need to talk about it. Okay, if I'm being honest, it probably won't work, but it's worth a try!

About a year and a half ago, a friend made a deal with me: watch one FC Bayern match and if I still thought soccer was dumb and boring ("typical Americans" appears in the title for a reason!) after that match, she'd leave me alone. In hindsight, it would have been smarter to refuse the bet. Because within the first 45 seconds of the match after I tuned in, I watched as Bayern's keeper, Jorg Butt, scored off a PK and brought Bayern level with Juventus (they went on to win the match). I was hooked. Watching Bayern win the double, and then fall to Inter in the CL final, only served to solidify the fact that I, despite everything, had become a HUGE footy fan.

And as the purpose of this post is to introduce myself, here's what you need to know:
*I'll be starting my PhD in Religion and Social Change at the University of Denver/Iliff School of Theology in the Fall. This will likely only serve to cause me to obsess about sports even more.
*I'm a Minnesota girl at heart. Despite the fact that I no longer live there, I still think it's God's Country and it'll be "home" for a long time. As such, I'm a die-hard Twins fan.
*I'm not the first person you would expect to be a sports nut (in fact, a former roomie once commented that I was "the last person on earth" she had expected to become one).
*I believe that the answer to "club or country?" is ALWAYS club. I bleed for Bayern. Other clubs I root for: Liverpool and Real Madrid. And if you want an answer to the country question, I'm a German NT fan first and foremost. I'm learning to appreciate the USMNT, though.
*I could tell you my favorite players, etc, but let's be honest...you'll figure that out soon enough.