HERTHA AND BAYERN STUMBLE, BAYER AND SCHALKE CAPITALIZE

Stuttgart and 1860 share points in a make or break game. Köln keeps their
impressive home winning streak alive by crushing Rostock. Werder put on a
(by their standards) sensational away display to earn a point in Wolfsburg.

Lady luck left Lautern -- the Betze Boys lose at home to Freiburg. Bayern
suffer a shock home upset by compulsory excercise Frankfurt. Schalke took
advantage of an injury ridden Hertha to put four behind the league leaders.

Hamburg's keeper Butt gives his future coach Berti Vogts a succesfull debut
as Bundesliga coach. Above average Ruhr Derby ends in a deserved draw.
Unterhaching win the most exciting matchup in recent Bundesliga history
against Cottbus.


17 NOVEMBER 2000

STUTTGART			2-2		1860 MÜNCHEN
Thiam 19					Agostino 64
Ganea 71					Häßler 80

Ganea shocked the home crowd already after 2 minutes by missing a sitter
after great work from Pinto down the right flank. Then it was Thiam who
exchanged passes with the tiny winger before poking the VfB into the lead.

Mykland cleared Schneider's header off the line for his already beaten
'keeper. Dundee simply had to make it 2-0 after 50 minutes when all alone
in front of goal but the "Crocodile" dragged its shot wide.

Beierle, seconds into the game, hammered the ball against the crossbar, the
rebound bounced off Agostino into the net. The Löwen had 5 (!) chances to
clear a Balakov corner but didn't win a single header, Ganea pulled the ball
down and sent a deflected shot past Jentzsch to make it 2-1.

Thiam ruined a great 50 meter solo ride with an exhausted finish. Häßler
equalized with a free kick thanks to a positional error by 'keeper Hildebrand.
Coach Rangnick then subbed the highly motivated fan favourite Balakov for
his pet Lisztes earning him a thunderstorm of jeers & whistles.

Dundee headed just over from Seitz cross so 2-2 it stayed.
[TL]

Attendance : 22,000


18 NOVEMBER 2000

KÖLN				5-2			ROSTOCK
Cullmann 9						Arvidsson 24
Lottner 34						Lange 29
Kurth 40
Timm 49, 71

Cullmann opened the scoring with a header from Lottner's corner. Agali
flicked on a long goal kick, Arvidsson beat his marker to the ball and fired
into the far corner for the equalizer.

Hansa fantastically won the ball through great, great, aggressive pressing,
once again Arvidsson was sent clear on the wing, the Swedish attacker
penetrated into the area, sold Cullmann and Cichon a phenomenal dummy
with a stepover dribble and served Lange the ball on a silver plate, the
former captain couldn't miss. Awesome goal!

Lottner scored the equalizer with a cucumber of a shot courtesy of Kurth's
backdoor pass. Köln then completely turned the game back around when
Kurth headed in Scherz' cross.

The FC started the 2nd half with a bang from jewel Christian Timm who
scored his 4th of the season from Lottner's cross. Pröll made a great save at
the other end from Brand's free kick.

Timm then decided the game on a 1-man counter attack from Pröll's huge
throw-in which went almost half the length of the pitch. Lottner had a regular
2nd goal disallowed for "offside" and Majak received his marching orders for
his 2nd bookable offence to finish a highly entertaining game.
[TL]

Red Card : Majak 84 (Rostock)
Attendance : 27,000


WOLFSBURG			1-1			BREMEN
Maric 64							Bode 40

First half was a no-show before Kryger tackled the ball to Bode, the German
senior international buried a left-footed shot in the right-bottom corner for
the deserved lead as the Green Whites (playing in red) were the more active
team.

Wolfsburg stepped up the pace in the 2nd half and Werder refrained to do
anything more than sitting on their lead, substitute Maric with the logical
equalizer with a header from Weiser's cross.
[TL]

Attendance : 15,860


KAISERSLAUTERN			0-2			FREIBURG
							Sellimi 14
							Zeyer 90

Georg Koch parried Kehl's shot against the post, Sellimi put away the rebound
on Freiburg's very first constructive attack of the afternoon.

Golz made a phenomenal (and I mean phenomenal) double save against
Klose and Hristov at the beginning of the 2nd half to single-handedly deny
'Lautern the equalizer.

Freiburg put the game out of reach with a 3-touch counter attack  : Sellimi to
Weißhaupt, 'keeper is out of his goal, centred to Zeyer, 0-2 final score.
[TL]

Attendance : 39,383


BAYERN MÜNCHEN		1-2			FRANKFURT
Paulo Sergio 13						Schur 38
							Fjørtoft 63

Bayern started out in a colorful and dominant way reminiscent of the final
match of last season.  One difference however  : we forgot to score goals.
One one very nice effort, Tarnat hit a long pass to Sergio cutting between
two defenders, and Sergio controlled it on the dead run and tucked it past
Heinen in goal for the 1-0 lead at 13 minutes. We thought we'd have another
easily and maybe three, but the forwards kept faking each other out, and on
one other glorious cross pass by Tarnat to Elber from left to right and then
Elber's center, Brazzo scored but Sergio had run offside.  Looked outrageous
from our seats but the TV replays showed Sergio a good meter offside.  After
that, Frankfurt got a harmless free kick from 40m out but Schur beat our
sleeping defenders to the ball, and Kahn, who was out of position by about
1 meter (too far inside the post), realised too late he'd have to save it and
his hand pawed past the ball.  1-1 and Bayern were well and truly shocked.
This reminded me of some of Leverkusen's games last year : totally dominant
but failing to score on N chances while the other side put away 1 of 1 and
get the draw.

In the second half, the same end was smashed, but by the other team as
they all looked to have exchanged shirts.  It was Bayern's defense pitifully
swimming in circles while Frankfurt hit a 4-touch play ending in Fjortoft's
chip/volley over a Kahn who probably shouldn't have come out.  1-2 to
Frankfurt, which was the final tally.  On both goals, the central defenders
were actually most at fault, being beaten to far too many balls.  Sforza's
50-50 stats were great (70 percent) but this was due to his going for too
few balls.  There just isn't enough challanging, and the defense are playing
miserably together.

One other thing : the referee was far too slow in pulling cards.  Though
this hurt mainly us in the 2nd half, it would have hurt whoever had to
come from behind.  Late in the game players could still get away with
intentional fouls, mostly for no cards, or sometimes for the first and
only card.  If the crap had been carded at the beginning of the 2nd half
as it should have been, the latter part of the game would have been more
open as Frankfurt tried to sit on the lead.  Kudos, however, to the
Frankfurt players for realising this situation before the home side did.
And kudos as well to their fighting spirit, with which they sealed this
victory, their first in Munich against Bayern since 1974. [BS]

Attendance : 47,000


HERTHA				0-4			SCHALKE
							Sand 4, 19, 86
							Böhme 80

Sand gave S04 the shock lead with a sweet lob over Király courtesy of a
Hajto longball out of defense. The Danish international striker then added a
2nd with a thumping header from Möller's corner.

Asamoah had his 2nd goal of the season wrongly disallowed for offside. The
stocky German/Ghanaian striker was floored by Wosz on the edge of the box,
soon to be German full international (?) Böhme nailed in the resulting free
kick from an acute angle.

Sand then boosted his game tally to 3 with a nice run-into-position-and-shoot
from subsitute Youri Mulder. Schalke 1st busted open Dortmund at the
Westfalenstadion and now they destroyed Hertha in their Olympic Fortress.
The question is how far can the "Knappen" go this season?
[TL]


HAMBURG			1-3			LEVERKUSEN
Präger 10						Rink 1, 33
							Neuville 73

Another unnecessary defeat. This time we played with Töfting as DMC, Jan
Sandmann as MR and Tony as SC. Kette was left on the bench in favour of
Präger (Heinz ist still out of form). The game started and Lev catched us
sleeping - Rink tapped in a low cross from Ponte. It was their only chance in
the first half...

This goal woke us up and from then on it was our game. We fought well, we
played well and Lev had many problems, esp. after crosses. As a result Präger
scored after a long throw-in (Tony, who had a great first half, hit the post a
few minutes before).

After this goal the game stayed the same and it seemed just a question of
time when we would score the lead - but Butt killed us. After a backpass he
tried a trick, but got it wrong and Rink got the ball from him and scored...*

This broke our neck. We tried to put pressure on Lev's goal, but Lev defended
much better and we played without confidence and power, so that Lev was
superior from then on. Lev got 2 great opportunities from counter attacks :
Butt made a brilliant save on a Ponte shot and Neuville converted the other
one.

Schneider saved a Hertzsch-header on the line - and that was our next
defeat...

* For those, who don't know it : Butt will go to Leverkusen at the end of the
season. His announcement of his departure and especially the way he acted
in the negotiations before caused a huge upset among HSV-fans. Guess, what
we want to do to him now...   :-(
[SM]


Attendance : 49,000


19 NOVEMBER 2000

BOCHUM			1-1			DORTMUND
Drincic 75						Heinrich 87

Game went up and down in the first half with Bastürk going close on several
occasions and Evanílson striking the post for Dortmund. Drincic spectacularly
volleyed Bochum into the lead from Maric's cross.

3 minutes before the end Jörg Heinrich pounced on a through pass from 17
year old teenage prodigy Emmanuel Krontiris and equalized from an offside
position. Lehmann defused a violent Mamic free kick to hold on to the point
for Yellow Black.
[TL]

Attendance : 33,000 (sold out)


UNTERHACHING			2-1			COTTBUS
Breitenreiter 6						Franklin 55
Oberleitner 42

Huge weakening for Cottbus : They had to take the pitch without their
brilliant playmaker Miriuta who was out nursing a bruised thigh. Breitenreiter
gave the home side the early lead from Rraklli's cross.

Energie weakly cleared a corner, Schwarz headed it back in, Oberleitner
stopped it and made it 2-0 from close distance. Tremmel couldn't hold onto
Beeck's strong header, Franklin headed one back for the visitors.

Breitenreiter managed to miss an open goal from like 5 meters out but it
didn't matter as 'Haching still laid their bricks to victory.
[TL]

Attendance : 10,500


Ciao,

Tim

[SM] = Sven Mischkies
[TL] = Tim Leidecker

tim@milanmania.com
http://milanmania.com
http://soccer-europe.com