How crazy can you get - Bayern suspends Oliver Kahn for one match

Just as the Champions League matches get into the final minutes - and it looks as if Schalke will advance and Bremen will end up in the UEFA Cup - there is a special program on the German Sports Station DSF (German Sports Television) about the suspension of Oliver Kahn. These are the facts: the clubs suspended the player because of displinary reasons for one game and he will have to pay another 25.000 Euros. That's it. Of course it's a journalists duty to dig for further reasons which might have had an influence on the decision of the club. But the way those blokes of DSF do it it just gets way too hilarious. First up they show a report about the morining practice session of Bayern Munich in which goalkeeping coach Sepp Maier gives a rather enigmatic interview in which he tries to indicate that there was something going on which he knows what it is but he won't tell the media. You get the picture. He's saying no comment in a rather polite way.. Then there's pictures of Kahn running around the pitch, all alone, the team running around elsewhere. The whole report ends with a shot of Oliver Kahn entering his car and driving away.

Think that's it? Think again.

Another report follows which covers the afternoon session and here we get an intrerview with Kahn (nickname "The Titan") himself. The interviewer is humbled and very very poltie towards the man and by the time the questions are done we know ... nothing new. Just some bunch of phrases and excuses and that's it.

So this is what the media is trying to squeeze out of this whole story. First up Kahn gave an interview to German football magazine "kicker" in which he accused the new signings Ribery and Toni to slack off during the past few weeks. He is reported to have said that Bayern is not like "Marseille or Fiorentina", it's more like "Real, Barca or Milan". This is thought to hjave provoked the supension. What the media are after though is that he left the christmas party too early to have dinner with his girlfriend. And this is when we enter the dirty hell of tabloid journalism. I mean, honestly, how stupid can you get thinking that this is a reason to suspend a player who has played for the club for more than 10 years and is still one of the top goalkeepers in Germany (which automatically makes him one of the best in the world, if you might excuse my arrogance there, my dear British readers). There must have been something else, not just some damn christmas party. This is ridiculous. But the DSF jerks still try to go on with that tabloid bullshit and they will drag this through the whole, you bet! Another masterpice of German sports journalism. Just when you thought it can't get any lower...

(Alright, it's Schalke to the next round and Bremen to the Uefa Cup now definetely, closing minutes)