It's the most wonderful time of the year...

In the United States, as the start of the academic year approaches, one of the office supply companies runs the same commercial: kids in a store, shopping for school supplies, looking horribly sad, while their parents all giddily sing along to the Christmas carol "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year." Here at FC Hollywood, things like this

have the four of us giddly wearing our Bayern kits and counting down the days (39, if you were curious) until the 2011-12 Bundesliga season officially kicks off. Not that we're excited or anything...

While the Women's World Cup provides football on our teles, our thoughts are today at Sabener Straße with the return of the first wave of the FC Bayern boys and the arrival of a new coach and several new signings. Lots of our internationals are still off enjoying their holidays (Toni is in Spain, where apparently it's sunny, according to his latest blog update), but Basti was back today, along with new signings Nils Petersen (you may remember him from such feats as being the top scorer in 2.Bundesliga last season) and Rafinha (who says "Lahm and I have everything in order to be a superb pair of full-backs, to win many titles and to write history in Munich. I have more experience and am wiser now and I believe that I can play better at Bayern that I ever have before") and a cast of familiar faces (Contento, Gustavo, Butt).

So...39 days left. Will we sign Boateng? (Apparently, he has a physical on Wednesday with the team) Will we sign Vidal? In addition to looking forward to the start of the season, it'll be nice to be out of the transfer window where we might get an entire day without a ridiculous rumor that X player wants to go to X team or how we might buy the moon and ask him to play LB (wait...that was under LVG...nevermind).

Bayern's 2011/2012 Bundesliga Schedule

1. Borussia M'Gladbach H

2. VfL Wolfsburg A

3. Hamburger SV H

4. 1. FC Kaiserslautern A

5. SC Freiburg H

6. FC Schalke 04 A

7. Bayer Leverkusen H

8. TSG Hoffenheim A

9. Hertha BSC H

10. Hannover 96 A

11. 1. FC Nürnberg H

12. FC Augsburg A

13. Borussia Dortmund H

14. FSV Mainz 05 A

15. Werder Bremen H

16. VfB Stuttgart A

17. 1. FC Köln H

18. Borussia M'Gladbach A

19. VfL Wolfsburg H

20. Hamburger SV A

21. 1. FC Kaiserslautern H

22. SC Freiburg A

23. FC Schalke 04 H

24. Bayer 04 Leverkusen A

25. TSG Hoffenheim H

26. Hertha BSC A

27. Hannover 96 H

28. 1. FC Nürnberg A

29. FC Augsburg H

30. Borussia Dortmund A

31. FSV Mainz 05 H

32. Werder Bremen A

33. VfB Stuttgart H

34. 1. FC Köln A

Some not so fun things:

1. Season ending away at Köln. They had one of the best home records last season, so let's hope we have the title wrapped up in April and won't have to rest our hopes of winning on the final game. ;)

2. Late away game against Bremen. I know Bremen had a piss poor season in 2010/11, but I honestly think they're going to be our main competition this year.

3. Manuel Neuer will face his old club, Schalke 04, early in the season. Let's just...get it over with, shall we?

And some fun things:

1. Well, personally, my study abroad in Berlin is looking more and more likely every day. The Bundesliga gods have blessed me with Bayern playing Hertha in March. ;)

What are your thoughts on the schedule?

Need I say more? Willkommen, Manu! Endlich!

Oh, but here, he said some nice things (after eating lunch with a certain sporting director).

"I know definitely what I want. I look forward to these five years. I know Munich and I think I will be comfortable here. I know this is not normal for me, this is all new territory. But I look forward to it."

Coming off a night of 4 hours of sleep, waking up to pictures of Manu walking through Marienplatz was a wonderful surprise. :)

What other signings are you guys hoping we land this summer?

How about that qualifier, eh?

Today, Germany and Austria clashed in Vienna. It wasn't the prettiest match ever, but there are a couple of things that we Bayern fans can be proud of.

First of all, David Alaba was man of the match. Period. He had Lahm on the ropes for the entire game and he looked AMAZING out there. Raise your hand if you're glad he's coming back to us. Wow. That's a lot of hands, readers!

Secondly, despite a serious lack of finishing for the vast majority of the game, Mario's second goal was beautiful. Toni's corner was handled well by Mesut, who fed to Lahm, who sent in the perfect cross for Mario. The video below has both of his goals, as well as that of Alaba (which was brilliant).

Clearly, Basti was missed today, but hey! No Bayern players were injured in the winning of this match!

And now for something completely different

Brittany and I have decided to rate beauty on a scale ranging from

0: MELEK (fugly slut)

5: Wahiba (beauty score brought down by less than attractive footballer)

10: Adler Concubine (flawless human being); also I realize Adler does not play for Bayern, but when you look like THIS (DEAR SWEET GOD) why not be his concubine? 

Brittany and me, we’re concubines, WHAT ARE YOU?
----


Ahem. I promise that once I am entirely caught up on sleep, I will do something constructive and not ridiculous, unless it is my job to be THAT contributor...

We have a new number one!

Today is a great day. Schalke 04 announced on their website (and Neuer himself confirmed it via his Facebook (see below for text) later) that the club has agreed to terms with FC Bayern and that Neuer will be making the move to Munich later this summer. Details are still coming out (four years? five years?) and the deal is expected to be officially announced soon, but for now, we say:

Willkommen in Bayern, Manu!

English translation: Today Schalke 04 announced my move to Bayern Munich. I wanted a change to develop myself. Many of my national team colleagues are now my club teammates. I am very grateful to Schalke, but especially the fans for their support over the last years.

belatedly, sam makes a post

oh hello again. it's been quite some time since I last updated and a whirlwind road trip around Southern Italy fell somewhere between now and my last post, but the truth is, I have been home for a few weeks now. I've just been horribly, fabulously lazy. Putzing around Munich doing nothing much outside of drinking beer and walking my dog. It's been relatively quiet on the definitive news front but there have been some developments to take note of.

• the aforementioned prospective Rafinha deal is all set to go ahead, so expect to see that official presentation in a matter of days, at the most. As mentioned by my esteemed colleague Brittany, Rafinha is a right back and this will see our pint-sized kapitän switched back over to the left flank. I always felt as if Lahm linked up better with Ribery than he did with Robben, so this could be a good thing for our offense as well as our defense, even though it's not technically Lahm's preferred position. It also has interesting ramifications for the national team, feel free to talk amongst yourselves about that.


• Neuer, Neuer, where art thou, Neuer? Rummenigge remains confident that Schalke will honor their agreement regarding Neuer's future transfer to Bayern. Bayern players are already practically referring to him as one of their club teammates. After Neuer rejected a clusterfuck of a last ditch attempt at getting him to renew his contract with Schalke (a messy affair which apparently involved Vladimir Putin, what), there's not much they can do except stall, and stalling is what they're doing while they try and find a replacement for him. It seems very much as if Schalke merely wants to drag this out a bit longer just to make it look as if they did everything they could to get Neuer to stay. It's frustrating for Bayern because I believe we want to get this transfer locked down before looking towards confirming further deals in fixing our defense, a defense that has been held together with scotch tape and hope in the past few seasons.


• speaking of further deals, Manchester City wants an absurd amount of money (I believe the figure I read was 18m?) for center back Jerome Boateng. I have a very dear friend who is a lifelong Manchester City fan and his gripes with the current management are many - I have been assured that there is no logical reasoning behind this demand, so we can assume that they're just doing it because they can. Great. I guess all we can do is wait and see.

Last but never, ever least, Franz Beckenbauer has officially retired from all held football related positions, choosing to spend more time with his family. We've all known this was coming for a while now and yet it still feels as if we're not really saying goodbye to him, because could we ever say goodbye to Herr Beckenbauer? He will always be our der kaiser. Thank you for everything, Franz.