Just as Louis van Gaal was quoted as saying “I can’t say anything different than what I have been saying”, I must say, that one can only write the same post-match blog so many times. And so that fact, conspiring with an extensive amount of travel over the course of the past weekend will make the Bayern Munich loss at Dortmund one of the least analyzed in these pages.
The “punishment” for the underachieving players was the cancellation of the annual Oktoberfest team trip to the Wiesn, and so the 200th anniversary of the grand party was not graced with the presence of the Bundesliga champions.
Probably a good thing-it leaves more beer to be consumed by confused and anxiety-riddled fans. Given Bastian Schweinsteiger’s injury diagnosis on Monday (torn foot ligaments-indefinite absence), Bayern is now as wounded as it is out of sync.
While the international week will undoubtedly be rife with finger pointing, I-told-you-sos, wild transfer projections and even more creative rhetoric involving the word scheisse, loyal fans need to find their way through humor and imagination. The dreck that is this team on the pitch has to be seasoned in our imaginations with some version of the incompetence in another area of life.
For instance, imagine Mario Gomez trying to make a sandwich; he starts by looking threatening when picking up the knife, but with no depth perception, he misses the mayonnaise jar entirely, nearly cutting his hand with the knife. Picking up the mustard and facing it the wrong direction, he squirts it directly onto his shirt. Another good one is to imagine Demichelis driving through a construction zone and attempting to merge. But my favorite one is where Robben announces he’s going to play for Germany and celebrates with a beer…
Seems the one player who got to have his beer is the right one. And if an image like that is possible, than so is a recovery to loftier heights.
Note: Things will be a little quieter here than usual over the next week. But I encourage those of you who are Germany fans to check out our blog there, and you will likely be seeing some “special” reporting from me in another section of The Offside. Stay tuned.