Closing out the First Half of the Season

So, here's where we stand going into the winter break, kiddos. We've still got the DFB Pokal match up tomorrow but the Bundesliga is closed for the holidays.

I had the good fortune of being at Bayern - Gladbach although unfortunately, I missed out on the super rad laser show as my dad had turned into a snowman over the course of the 90+ minutes and talked me into leaving so that he may defrost.

It wasn't exactly our best match. But I'm hesitant to come out and complain the way many others have about how terrible we played because all in all, it was an entertaining match from start to finish. Some rubbish referee calls but I'm not gonna blame our misfortune on the ref because that would be silly. What I took away from this match is that we didn't give up where we would have a season ago. We've gone 1-0 down to Gladbach before and let it stay that way. On Friday night, we didn't.

Some stand outs:

♣ Franck Ribery was outstanding. Do I say this too often? Well.

♣ Sometimes Manuel Neuer is solid as a rock and I am never worried and sometimes he plays games like this where I am tempted to scream: THE BOX IS YOUR HOME. ARE YOU TOO GOOD FOR YOUR HOME?

♣ those good five minutes when Martinez was down and then he got up and stumbled over onto the sidelines were terrifying. For those who missed it, he got an elbow to the face and could not see out of his left eye for quite some time, but rumor has it that he's just fine right now. Deep sigh of relief all around.

♣ Mandzukic has matches where he's excellent and then he has matches where he has very little impact at all. This was one of the latter.

♣ Shaqiri Shaqiri Shaqiri

Herbstmeister

If one looks at the Bundesliga table, and one is a Bayern fan, one cannot help but laugh.

Bayern: 16 matches, 13 wins, 2 draws, 1 loss, +37 GD, 41 points
Bayer Leverkusen: 15 matches, 9 wins, 3 draws, 3 losses, +9 GD, 30 points
Borussia Dortmund: 16 matches, 7 wins, 6 draws, 3 losses, +13 GD, 27 points
Eintracht Frankfurt: 16 matches, 8 wins, 3 draws, 5 losses, +4 GD, 27 points
Schalke 04: 16 matches, 7 wins, 4 draws, 5 losses, +5 GD, 25 points
VFB Stuttgart: 16 matches, 7 wins, 4 draws, 5 losses, -5 GD, 25 points

Fact: Our GD is higher than anyone else's points. And that's true even if Leverkusen wins tomorrow.

There are still a few matches to be played between now and Christmas, and we wrapped up the Herbstmeister a few weeks ago, but it's still nice to look at the pretty table. :-)

(I don't have much to say about today's match, as I might have slept through it, but if Gomez isn't back in our Starting XI after the holidays, I'm going to be REALLY cranky!).

Being Bayern: Match report v. Bate Borisov

If you're like me, you had to switch away from the English commentators for this match. I'm sorry, but I don't want to be reminded of the CL final every 5 seconds, thanks. Thank goodness for the German stream!

Apparently, playing against ten men is difficult for us, but playing with ten men means you're facing an ANGRY and motivated Bayern squad. Thomas Muller, you are FC Bayern and that goal was so typically you it was both hilarious and a lovely statement of "Yeah, no, we're still gonna win. But nice try."

For the record: Boa didn't deserve a red card. He was clearly playing the ball and while it was a yellow, it was NOT a red. The foul on Contento that followed a few minutes later was far more dangerous and deserved a red if Boa was red-carded for his challenge. Apparently, it's okay for a Bate player to clear Contento's legs out from under him intentionally, but Boa can make a play for the ball.

Though it did help that a second yellow resulted in a Bate player being sent off. Clearly, Polyakov has been taking diving lessons from certain Spanish strikers who play in England and will remain nameless.

We had four awesome goals today, though, and it was really great to see four different men sharing in the scoring (though I want Gomez to come back to the league with a vengeance and win the cannon again this year). I have a hard time picking a favorite goal today...they were all pretty wonderful. Mario got his first CL goal of the season, as did Alaba and Shaqiri and Thomas...proved that a bad call won't ruin us this year.

Other highlights of today's match included the German comms talking about how Toni Kroos has the best shooting technique in the league and Kapitan Basti. And the linking up of Shaqiri and Gomez is something that we should all be paying attention to: two of our goals came from those two, one with Shaquiri feeding the ball to Mario and one with Gomez feeding the ball to Xherdan. And, if you're like me, you were excited to see that Manu is third in line for the captaincy. For a Schalker to join Bayern and become so beloved so quickly is impressive and it makes me incredibly happy to see Manu fully embraced by the team and the fans (and he's got experience and leadership, two things you want in someone who will occasionally captain the team).

But the best part? We are officially Gruppensieger! Congrats to the boys on taking first place in our group in the CL! We'll leave you today with the sign of support the team sent to Holger today.

Match Report: Bayern v. Dortmund

Okay, let's start with the bad news (as well as your German vocabulary lesson for the week). "Badstuber erleidet Kreuzbandriss" means Holger has torn his ACL and, for all practical purposes, is likely out for the rest of the season. They'll have to wait a bit for the swelling to go down before they can do surgery (can take anywhere from a day or two up to a few weeks) and then rehab post-op is at least three months. Realistically, if we're talking about him being fully healed and not brought back too quickly (*cough* Torres *cough*), we might have him back for the last few Bundesliga fixtures and any Pokal/CL championships. It's a huge blow to our back line, as Holger's move back to the center has strengthened our defense (and how good is it to see Alaba back in the Starting XI, by the way?). But we've got Boa and Dante, with Tymo and Martinez and Gustavo (once he's no longer injured) who can also play center half well. And yes, Bayern fans, those desires to see the ghost of Mark van Bommel slide tackle Gotze (for causing the injury to Holger) and Hummels (he's so freaking smug!) are totally normal and part of the healing process. (An interesting side note: this means that the central defense for the German NT is now Mertesacker and Hummels...I bet Per will REALLY be missing Holger, too!)

As for the match itself...there's not much to say. Their keeper had a good day, Mario Gomez was brought on FAR too late (honestly, Jupp, I love Mandy as much as anyone, but Gomez should have started...it's DORTMUND, for goodness sake!), and Holger's absence was clearly felt on the defensive lapse that led to Dortmund's goal.

I debated waiting to write this until I was less angry, but screw it. I am angry. We deserved to win that. Franck was offsides when he shouldn't have been, Toni was caught a little bit off-guard, but STILL. We had more possession, we played our hearts out, and, most importantly, we didn't sink to the chippiness that Dortmund displayed (clearly, they don't think they can win a match against us without scrapping).

So what did we learn today? We're still Herbstmeister, our goal differential is still at +35, and Mario Gomez is still a game changer (once again, within seconds of being brought on, he created a chance that almost won us the match, save for a pretty good save for Weidenfeller). And can we please stop calling this a "Classico"? Dortmund have a lot more to prove until they're in our ranks in terms of history and, let's face it, we'd all rather NOT have the comparison to Real Madrid/Barcelona.

And a brief note to Sky Sports: Did you SERIOUSLY just ask Toni how he felt to have let in the winning goal?!? While, yes, he was caught off-guard, there were TEN other Bayern players in the same area and it's not as if he was the only one caught sleeping there. I realize I'm being overprotective of my boys, but seriously, they just drew a game they should have won. Try not being an asshole to the guy who scored the goal.

We'll see you back here on Wednesday, when we meet Bate Borisov in Allianz at 2:45pm EST. Until then, be well, guard your ACLs, and AUF GEHT'S BAYERN!

Match Report: Bayern v Hannover

How much of a difference does Super Mario Golmez make to the team? Well, today, he scored about 20 seconds after coming on as a sub. So...there's that.

Another big win for Bayern, and Schalke did us a favor by drawing Frankfurt (we'll just pretend that Dortmund didn't win and aren't now sitting second on the table). 5-0 against Hannover, who are not a bad team, is definitely something to be thankful for.

Martinez opened the scoring up nice and early, in the fourth minute, with a great goal, his first for Bayern. He really is turning out to be incredibly versatile and able to play wherever Jupp decides to stick him. And Toni's goal was fantastic as well. Then we added in a goal for Franck, a goal for Dante (complete with samba celebrations), and then our dear Herr Gomez came on, scored a pretty amazing goal.

It was nice to see Tymo get some playing time (and Basti get some rest). Only two yellows (Basti and Mandzukic), no reds, and five more saves for Neuer.

It's another English Week, as we head to face SC Freiburg on Wednesday 28 November at 2pm EST and then face Dortmund at home on Saturday 1 December at 12:30pm EST. Something to watch: we have two matches against FC Augsburg (8 December for the League, 18 December for the Cup). It'll be our first Pokal match against a Bundesliga team, but Augsburg are currently sitting dead last on the table. So should be interesting! See you all Wednesday! And, until then, just take a few moments to savor the beauty of the Bundesliga table that the moment: 34 points on 13 matches, with a GD of +33! And the 33rd goal? Scored by our own number 33, Mario Gomez!

Schweinez rides again!

Mario Gomez made his return to the first team on Tuesday against Valencia. Here's hoping for a Schweinez reunion in the Starting XI tomorrow!

Pokal Time!

Now, I know that Kaiserslautern was relegated and they're in the 2-Bundesliga, but did anyone else have a little bit of a laugh (or cry) when they saw our lineup for today? Pretty sure someone (*cough* Jerome *cough*) is starting as a bit of a punishment for his performance last Sunday...and I much prefer Kapitan Tymo to Kapitan Arjen, but that's okay.

And 12 minutes in, Pizarro gives us the lead, 1-0, off a lovely assist from Robben.

By minute 18, my commentators had commented on Robben's attempt to re-gain fitness at least three times. I wonder how long before they start talking about how van Gaal is to blame...

We're back from the half and within the first few minutes, Robben scores to put us up 2-0. My German stream died, which means I'm now watching the match in Portuguese. Which, well, is interesting. Better than Arabic or another language I don't speak, but it's a little weird hearing the German AND the Brazilian names pronounced correctly.

Then there was another Pizarro goal and another Robben goal. Woohoo.

Not bad, folks, not bad at all. Glad to see some of the newbies get some playing time. And with that, despite the match not being over, I'm off to class. Until Saturday...(and the entire US cheers for a late match start! I can sleep in past 7:30!!!)