The pressroom had a few more bodies in it these days, which wasn’t a bad thing really. The tone of the last couple had been a bit more…challenging, especially after the loss against Bayern, but with the January transfer window coming up, and the rumors floating around, there was reason for it to be crowded.
Coach Schmidt took his jacket off, folding it over the chair, and sat down. As soon as he did hands were raised, and voices called out.
“Jeremy,” he said, pointing at the young reporter from Planet Football.
“Thanks coach. I was wondering if we could get your thoughts going into the transfer window. A Lot of rumors going around about Games and potentially a few others leaving.”
Coach Schmidt nodded.
“It’s highly probable, but there’s always an opportunity he could stay as well. He’s a great young player, he’s having yet another good season for us. If I could go back and resign him all over again I would have made the Release Clause even bigger,” he said with a smile. He pointed, but the reporter he had looked at was interupted.
“What do you have to say to the rumors your are moving him on because of what happened in November?” Michael Amber, from Berlin Soccer Post, had apparently decided being confrontational was the way to make himself known. Thus far, Coach Schmidt had either ignored or let the criticism not affect him. Between Armin and Michael though, he had his hands full lately.
“Those rumors are unfounded. If I was to let go of every player who had some sort of altercation, I wouldn’t have a starting eleven, or a second eleven.”
“Do you think what happened will scare away other teams, or lower his value?” Michael followed up his first question with another.
“Why would it? The facts of what happened are quite clear, there’s a reason the state decided not to press charges.”
Michael sniffed, and looked away. Coach Schmidt sighed, and ran his hands thru his hair, then made a motion to a smartly dressed young man, who handed him a manila folder. Coach opened it, and took out a sheet of paper.
“An Article from the Berlin soccer post, January 12th, 2012,” he started to Read. “As the national teams continues its quest in winning the Euro Championship, and winning the World Cup in 2014, noone can deny that the country has done a very credible job of rebuilding after the 90’s. One of those reasons was identifying and cultivating excellent youth prospects, who although they are on the young side now, may well become the National teams next star in the next decade. Earlier in the week at Stadion auf dem Wurfplatz several of us had the opportunity to watch several talented youngsters for both Hertha Berlin and Borussia Dortmund play. While several young players had fine games, this reporters opinion is that the player of the match should have been Hertha product Nicholas Schmidt. The midfielder was everywhere, tackling, passing, running, but what amazed many onlookers was that he all but shut down Borussia and German National team starter Mario Gotze. The Borussia attacking Midfielder has been a key component of their rise to the top of the Bundesliga, and although his recently announced hip injury due to cartilage inflammation may have slowed him down in the game, anyone who was present will have seen that the way Schmidt was inside Gotze’s front pocket all day, the Dortmund attacking Midfielder was going to be in for a long struggle. Had Samed Yeşil not scored three goals and an assist, it’s very likely Schmidt’s performance, including an assist in which he all but emabarassed Gotze on defense, would have won the award.”
Schmidt stopped reading, and held the paper up.
“The byline on this article has the name Joachim Mueller on it.” he asked. The press room was silent.
“But Herr Mueller didn’t write it, did he Michael?” Schmidt lowered the paper to the table folding his hands.
“Those of you may not remember the scandal back then, but Herr Mueller was the senior reporter for Berlin Soccer Post, and he used to send younger reporters out, promise them a byline, and then claim credit. He was caught when another young reporter reported him to management, and after an investigation had found out that it was a practice he had done for about three years. But he was powerful enough that he could ruin a young reporters career, and he did, on more than one occassion. But in their defense, and to their credit, Berlin Soccer Post found out, investigated, fired Herr Mueller, and spent the next decade rebuilding its reputation. I’m proud to be a subscriber.
“But what you may not know is that Herr Amber and Herr Mueller had a physical confrontation over the issue, isn’t that right, Michael.” Coach Schmidt stopped talking, and stared at the reporter, who returned the stare in stone silence, until he folded his notebook, shoulder his bag, stood up and walked out of the press room.
“I bring up that story to illustrate a point: None of us here think any less of Herr Amber. That he got into a physical confrontation with a coworker is on one hand regrettable, but knowing the reasons why, I would be hard pressed to say there is not any of us in this room who would not have done the same thing. How does this relate to Jose?
“Jose is a good, young lad. But he’s out of his element here, there is quite a bit of difference, culturally amongst other issues, between Berlin, Germany and Mindelo, Cape Verde. To help him adjust, Jose brought a few of his friends along with him. One of those friends stole from him, amongst other things. Jose found out, they had a fight, and Jose beat his friend up, in a public space. That’s why Jose was arrested and let go, that’s why his former friend was arrested, let go, and sent back to Cape Verde. You,” Coach said, pointing to the reporters in the room, “know all this because it’s public record. Jose didn’t miss any games as a result. He has been cleared not just by the police, but by the team, and by me.
“So, if you will pardon my language, any team who comes after Jose, and they will, that want to use this incident against him to try and lower his value, lower his salary, lower his standing in the game, are fucking idiots who haven’t done their due diligence, and that’s not a team I am willing to sell Jose to, and I don’t care if they offer us 10 or 100 times his release clause amount.
“Young Men will make mistakes,” he said, taking his glasses off and polishing them with a handkerchief he retrieved from his pocket. Putting them back on he scanned the silent room. “Sometimes those mistakes are justifiable, sometimes they are not, but if I were to use Jose’s mistake against him, keep him off the squad, it not only hurts the team, it hurts him, because punishing him for doing the right thing means the next time he’s in a similar situation he may not react the same way, and that can only hurt him in the long run. Am I happy he got into a fight? No. Am I proud he stood up for himself? Very. And if I am going to hold his mistake him, I have to hold all of my players mistakes against them, and then just to be fair will have to extend that consideration to my staff, my scouts, and eventually those of you sitting in this room right now. And if I were to do that, how many of you would be here in two weeks?”
He gave them a look few had ever seen, Nicholas Schmidt well and truly angry and pissed off. He scanned the room, looking reporters in the eye as best he could until they either looked away or nodded in agreement.
“That’s it for the off field Jose questions,” Coach Schmidt said, a statement of fact noone in the room was going to argue with. “Now, who has a football related question I can answer?”
The past few seasons have become familiar to us at Dynamo. We start out strong, get afflicted by the holiday malaise, stumble through Spring, and hang on for dear life until math and circumstance determine we aren’t being relegated, despite my fears otherwise. I was really hoping this season would be different, but the issue is I’ll have to wait till spring to find out. Until then though, we had a few issues, like playing down to our opponents.
Yes, that is us needing PK’s to beat Lubeck in the Pokal. An 86th minute gasp of a goal by Frey gave us the draw, and we lucked out. Had we not beaten the RegionalLiga team, I suspect my job may have been on the line.
Davide Tiozzo has gotten off to a good start, which has been very nice. I doubt he will ever be world class, but I’ll take very good for a guy whose capable of playing the wing and up top. They Bayer 04 game was annoying, even Gomes finished on a 6.9, with the goal. We just were lackadaisical everywhere, and it showed. Stomping Union made everything feel a little better anyways.
Moukoko equalized for Red Bull in the 86th minute, and I threw my hands up, cursing the FM Gods, when Rukavina scored the winner for us in the 89th minutes. I spent the next ten minutes prostrate in front of my tower thanking the FM Gods for their kindness and generosity, they rewarded me with a draw against an Eintracht teams that is having issues this season, and a last gasp win against an Augsburg teams that is getting whiplashed from all the pro/rels its been going thru the past few seasons.
The things started to fall apart as they usually do: Slowly at first, then suddenly all at once.
Hoffenheim and Freiburg are not great teams, and we barely eked out draws against them. Wolfsburg is having a bad season as well, but put 5 past us. By the time the Pokal came around again, we beat Hoffenheim, but at that point, FIVE of my starting XI for the season were on long term injured reserve, including Esposito, who tweaked a hip. Then we also had this:
Mehri has been with us since the beginning,he was part of the first intake IIRC, and he’s had some solid seasons while we were in the Bundesliga 2. He’s not a Bundesliga player, in fact if he CA was above 90 I’d be shocked, but he’s been a team leader and a really good mentor, and losing him for 4 months hurts the youth team development.
November was just…ugh. Getting ROFL stomped by BMG is understandable, they are a good squad fighting for a UCL slot. Getting stomped by a bad Koln team, and then a bad Hertha Squad whose board wanted me to interview for the job three days prior? Just salt in the wound.
Braunschweig is the best team in the Bundesliga 2, but Gomes Hat Trick was a thing of beauty, and we brushed them aside. So of course he disappeared against Borussia, and a Tiozzo goal in the 85th minute saw us thru. Then we crapped the bed against a horrible Nurnberg team, if they aren’t relegated it’s because they had a second half for the ages. We played Bayern tough, but despite a 7.5 from Pavlovich, we lost. we finished the first half out by barely beating a poor Stuttgart team.
And now it’s the January transfer window, the phones won’t stop ringing; everyone’s been so jealous that people are getting a rest by getting hurt they want to get hurt so they can get a rest…and the bad news is we aren’t that lucky this year. The number of bad teams we are better than is maybe five, and it’s possible 33 or so points may not be enough to keep us from getting relegated. Right now we are at 21, and this isn’t going to be one of those “Addition by Subtraction” transfer windows. If it weren’t for the fact we have about 30M to spend, it might drive one to drink…
THE FOOTBALL MANAGER BLOG OF FM_JELLICO 