“Do you ever think we are getting to old for this?” Heinrich asked around a mouthful of food.
“To old for what?” Sasha asked
“Being a fan? Going to every game, gathering afterwards. It was cool whenm we were younger, but-“
“What’s your wife been telling you now?” Paul asked.
“Elise hasn’t said a thing-“
“That’s because she’s still mad at you for trying to fix the sink…” Sasha said with a smirk.
Discretion being the better part of valor, Heinrich shut up and ate more.
“We’re nothing,” Uwe said. The others stopped to stare at him.
“I went to my cousins wedding last month. In America. We went to a college football, that is American Football, game. The game started at 4PM. We got there at 8AM.”
“To do what?”
“Cook. Party. Drink. Make new friends. Play games. I met a guy who had been to every home game there since 1949, when he was six,” Uwe said with a smile.
“Sounds…”
“It was fun, we all had a good time. Some great food. That’s not the most impressive thing though.”
“What was?” Sasha asked after taking a drink.
“Keep in mind we are at a college football game. The stadium hold 117000 people. Every seat was full. Hardly anyone sat. The crowd was louder than they flyover before the game started.”
Everyone stared at him.
“Jesus, don’t let anyone from Bayern hear that,” Heinrich mumbled, “They’ll want their own 120K seat stadium just because they can.”
“True,” Uwe said, finishing his drink and sitting back. “But my point is, for a lot of people, it’s not fandom. It’s an extended family, where noone talks about the crazy uncles making salutes, waving flags, and singing songs they shouldn’t. And you all know as well as I do we’ve had a steeper road to climb because of the clubs past. There was a group at the game in America, raising money for a family who lost their home and belongings in a fire. They raised almost $60000 for them. And apparently the father had been a long time supporter of the team, and the school found out all about it and invited him and his family to watch the game from one of the good skyboxes. We’ve done similar things here.”
They all sat quietly for a few moments, thinking about the past.
“I make no apologies for being a BFC fan,” Sasha said. “But I am finding as I get older, getting into trouble isn’t as much fun as it used to be.”
“What is?” Heinrich asked, avoiding Paul’s attempt to whack him on the shoulder.
“Not getting caught,” Sasha replied with a smile.
The transfer window was relatively quiet. We had one in, Omar Mohamed, while Fabio Neiva left for Norwich, and Leo Marques went to Porto.
Mohamed I found thru my screenflow scouting, playing for the Sudanese national team. He’s a project, to be sure, but I think he has the potential to be a squad player for us in the future. I am going to send him on loan and see how he develops, and to be honest, if he doesn’t we finally in a position where €275K isn’t going to break us if it doesn’t pan out.
The New Year got off to a solid start:
Osman had decided that since Dylan isn’t scoring, he’s going to try, and had 3 goals to show for it. We beat two good teams in Eintracht and Freiburg, then Popovic saved us a loss in our Champions League Phase game against Chelsea. Bayern outshot us 28/10 and a 1.58xG to out 3/1 .28xG, but we somehow only managed to lose by 1, which in the gran scheme of thing that while a loss, it’s the best sort of loss out there, as it doesn’t affect our goal differential by too much. The tables were turned against Benfica, as we were better, not a lot but still better, than they were, only to come away with the loss. that left us in 15th place:
Legia, Legia, Legia…
February was very good. More than a few people took it upon themselves to start trying to score, instead of leaving it up to the strikers, and as a result, excepting the draw against BMG in the Knock Out Play Off Round, February was a clean sheet. In particular, beating Hansa 5-0 in the Pokal was very nice, sending our former Eastern rivals away with their tails tucked is never a bad thing IMO.
In other news, while Osman isn’t scoring much, he’s still scoring more than Dylan, and thats a good thing.
Before we get to the last part of the season, I don’t know what we did right, but we finally had a decent Intake, and by that I mean we not only got a good player in thru our system, he might actually be very good:
Constantin Ulreich is 4 1/2 star potential, and given the quality of players we have on our squad, I think that’s a legit PA for him. Heck, if this was the RegionalLiga, hell even Bundelsliga.2 he’d be starting for us. He just needs to grow a little and put on some more weight, but he’s the DCL of the future.
I don’t want to say we finished the year on a disappointing note, because we didn’t. Losing to Leipzig hurt, and we took Milan down to the wire, but they ended up winning on aggregate. They knocked us out of the Champions League last year as well. I am sensing a theme…
We had BVB on the ropes, but our defense fell apart in the 83rd minute and Gloukh scored to claw the draw back.
Losing to Hamburg sucked, because not only did we lose to a midtable team, we lost to a midtable team who were a man down in the 61st minute, right after Osman went out with an injury of his own. Statistically speak, we dominated theme everywhere it counts, excpet for goals scored. The only danger was were were in 3rd place at the moment, with an outside chance of falling to 6th or worse if we went on a Bottle Job adventure, but we picked ourselves up and won out, until BMG got their revenge by scoring in the 93rd minute, keeping them in 6th place, while we finished 3rd. Again.
And I didn’t realize it at the time, but was surprised when I saw this:
It Was a very good game. Hertha is a good squad, but Carlos Tenorio decided he didn’t want to lose, so he scored in the 81st minute:
It feels good to win. And winning the Pokal is a very good accomplishment.
We received €1034 Million for finishing in 3rd, we’ve €216M in the bank, and a transfer budget of €88M for starters next season. The board however, is refusing to build new Youth Facilities, or expand the youth recruiting, and they don’t think we need an affiliate either.
This does not bode well.
In other news:
I knew Curbelo was good, but 2nd best in all of European Football? Crap, now all the teams are going to be after him…
The sad thing about these statistics aren’t that I have 4 players with double digit goals, it’s that Viveros is my AP AM(C), and he was better than Dylan or Osman. hell even Cezar scored 10 goals, mostly coming off the bench after Dylan pissed me off to no end, but man do I need a good striker. I think Osman could be it, he definitely looks the part. Then again so did Dylan…
Oh, this is why the board was being skinflints…
At least they did it while I was still in town, and we had money for it…
OK…that’s not good…
THE FOOTBALL MANAGER BLOG OF FM_JELLICO 