Bundesliga star check
The lousy methods in professional football: How Gladbach cools Ginter to get rid of him
They give each other the cold shoulder: Mönchengladbach coach Adi Hütter (left) and national player Matthias Ginter
© Ulrich Hufnagel / Picture Alliance
Robert Lewandowski and Bayern don’t let anything go wrong when they win in Cologne, Erling Haaland annoys his own club despite the win against Freiburg and Borussia Mönchengladbach pursues a sales policy in a rude way.
That’s how the game day went
All results of the 19th match day, the table and statistics for reading can be found here stern-Ticker.
Game day excitement
Borussia Mönchengladbach lost their game against Bayer Leverkusen. That’s very annoying, because in Gladbach they hoped to take the next step out of the crisis after beating favorite opponents FC Bayern. Instead, sadness, anger and crisis continue to prevail. Not only the meager team performance contributed to the bad mood around Borussia, but also the astonishment at the line-up of coach Adi Hütter. He had left national defender Matthias Ginter out and called in Marvin Friedrich for a new signing. As the game progressed, he refrained from making a substitution when he could have, leaving Ginter to stew on the bench. That surprised the TV expert Lothar Matthäus very much. The record national player put his finger in the middle of the Gladbach wound after the game and grilled Hütter live on Sky. Matthäus said, staring past Hütter, among other things: “(…) That’s why we have to ask ourselves what the goal is with Ginter in the coming weeks and months. Do you want to let him starve on the bench? Or plan you still with him? (…).” Hütter, a little pale around the nose, countered dull: “In my opinion, you make it far too easy for yourself. I will never criticize a single player in front of the camera. Matthias Ginter is a good player. I didn’t say that either door is closed.”
The background is that Ginter will leave the club free of charge in the summer. Manager Eberl had previously made no secret of the fact that he would like to sell the defender immediately in order to collect a little fee for a player for whom he transferred 17 million to BVB four and a half years ago. Times are particularly tough financially during the pandemic. That clubs want to get rid of professionals is their right. But that Gladbach chooses such robust methods and puts a player out of action for purely tactical reasons and accepts sporting damage is something that rarely happens in this openness. It gets even worse when the manager himself bears a fair amount of responsibility for the situation. But this is another story.
Matchday Winner
This is Bayer Leverkusen. After four games in a row without a win, the team made it to third place by beating Gladbach. This is all the more remarkable because the team pulled off the incredible feat of giving away two penalties. The shooters Patrik Schick and Kerem Demibay both shot placed low into the corner, but Sommer was there quickly in both cases. Anyone who runs such a usury of opportunities usually does not win.
Game day loser
What does Haaland allow, to put it in the words of former Bayern coach Giovanni Trapattoni. Makes a great game, scores two goals in the 5-1 win over SC Freiburg, but stands up after the game and complains to Norwegian TV station Viaplay that Dortmund is putting him “under pressure”. He should decide by March whether to leave the club in the summer or stay. What can I say? Just this much: The interview was probably hardly the spontaneous statement of a sensitive young professional who is being played badly. The suspicion is that it was a calculated statement. It fits only too well with the method of Haaland consultant Mio Raiola, who has for years considered it incredibly tricky to cause public discounts in order to get as much money as possible for his clients. Most recently, he had made a high-profile trip to Barcelona and Madrid with Haaland’s father Alf-Inge. The BVB managers then had to answer questions about their top scorer’s desire to change in every interview for two weeks. It can also be annoying. It actually sounds very understandable that BVB would like to have a decision from Haaland by March because of planning security.
You should see this gate (again).
Robert Lewandowski scored three of the four goals against 1. FC Köln, but the goals were of average beauty, even if he broke the 300 Bundesliga mark. No, the best thing was achieved by Corentin Tolisso, who hammered the ball into the corner from 15 meters after a pass by Thomas Müller, as it should be.
Game day picture © Imago Images
Steffen Baumgart is certainly one of the more charismatic coaches in the league. The Cologne coach likes to talk a lot and always has a strong opinion ready. Since taking office in Cologne last summer, his trademark has been the flat cap with the number 72 (his year of birth). After the game, Bayern keeper grabbed this cap as a special trophy, in return he gave Baumgart his jersey, which is also customary. But a hat, who has one?
