Borussia Dortmund - VfL Bochum 2:1
VfB Stuttgart - Hannover 96 0:2
FC Schalke 04 - Karlsruher SC 0:2
Hertha BSC - FC Energie Cottbus 0:0
Arminia Bielefeld - Hamburger SV 0:1
VfL Wolfsburg - FC Hansa Rostock 1:0
MSV Duisburg - SV Werder Bremen 1:3
Bayern München - 1. FC Nürnberg 3:0
Eintracht Frankfurt - Bayer Leverkusen 2:1
Karlsruher SC continues to be the big surprise of the season. This weekend they beat favourites Schalke 04 away 0:2 to storm into 2nd place behind Bayern Munich who thrashed Nuremburg 3:0 on Sunday. Schalke were looking good during the week winning their away match in the Cahmpions League against Trondheim but they weren't able to keep up the momentum. Karlsruhe simply outran them playing two very nice counter attacks at the end of the game.
Bremen meanwhile is trying to keep track of the top winning against Duisburg 3:1. Duisburg are now firmly at the bottom of the table, just as Nuremburg, Cottbus and Rostock. Hamburg keeps on winning which noone had expected after the hilarious episode with Rafael van der Vaart trying to get to Valencia. Elsewhere at the bottom of the table Dortmund managed to stop a three game skid by winning against Bochum 2:1. Captain Christian Wörns was sent off shortly after half time leaving only 10 Dortmund players to try and make things possible. Bochum looked far better but failed to capitalize on Borussia's failures.
The struggles continue for champions Stuttgart who looked horrible against Hannover.
Looking down to the 2nd division Borussia Mönchengladbach seem to get their campaign for promotion back on track after a convincing 5:0 victory over TuS Koblenz. Just as 1.FC Cologne who downed Kickers Offenbach 4:1 at home.
And even further down the ladder sixth division Fortuna Köln got a 4:1 win on Friday against Rhenania Eschweiler. Now they are 6 points behind leaders Borussia Freialdenhoven and still in a good position for the only promotion spot.
Saturday, 6 October 2007
Friday, 5 October 2007
Uefa Cup: All German teams go through to the group stages
Although I didn't really have a chance to watch any of the matches of the first round of the Uefa Cup I still read an interesting comment by German sports writer Christoph Biermann who said that it is nice to see that the smaller teams of the German Bundesliga all made it through to the group stage this year. Keeping in mind that the almighty Bayern Munich are in there for Germany as well compared to other European superpowers the result doesn't look that bad for Germany. England lost a team (Blackburn), there's one Spanish team out (Saragossa) as well and Italy even lost 3 (Palermo, Empoli, Sampdoria) in the first round of play. Although the Spanish Primera Division seems to be a little more balanced England and Italy just have the same top teams playing in the Champions League and the rest of the pack just has to fight for what's left on the table. And while German teams are struggling in the Champions League (3 teams, 6 games, 5 losses up until today) it seems they have more chances in the Uefa Cup. Hamburger SV went through against Litex Lovetch (BUL), 1.FC Nuremburg got past Rapid Bukarest (ROM), Bayer Leverkusen managed to beat Uniao Leiria (POR) and Bayern Munich expectedly threw Belenenses Lisboa (POR) out of the competition. With the group stages now coming up it'll be interesting to see what the German teams can do there.
MLB: Rockies, Dbacks roll, Indians on warpath
The Cleveland Indians won their opening match against the New York Yankees in convincing style last night, it seems. I only watched the first 4 innings, but that was impressive stuff. Their starter C.C. Sabathia wasn't sharp in the 1st, but then got better over the next innings, while the Yankees starter Wang was struggling. It's still very interesting to see how things change in the audience once their team goes into the playoffs. I was really surprised by the noise the fans made when Philadelphia clinched the division title and they were just a noisy when they were playing the first match against Colorada, but what happened in Cleveland was just amazing. Every Yankee player who was an out was greeted with a huge roar by the crowd. What's lacking of course are the chants you can hear in European football stadiums, but the atmosphere seems to be impressive nonetheless.I bet it has died down a little in Philadelphia though, since the Phillies lost their 2nd match to the Rockies 5-10. Rockies 2nd baseman Kazuo Matsui was the man of the match, hitting a grand slam homerun, a double and a triple driiving in 5 runs and only falling shy of the circle by a single.
Elsewhere in the NL Arizona took a 2-0 lead over the Cubs by winning Game 2 8-4. Today will see the Red Sox take action again with Daisuke Matsuzaka taking the mound against the Angels in his first postseason appearance in the States.
Stagedives and Highfives: Gorilla Biscuits in Cologne
Yesterday saw the long awaited and highly anticipated reunion tour show by New York hardcore legends Gorilla Biscuits taking place at Cologne's "Kantine" club. This one was announced at the beginning of the year and should have taken place in summer, but due to some problems noone really knows about it got pushed back to fall and this is where we are now. Now there are not many shows that are labelled "must be there", but this one certainly was. Lots of people showed up, the plates on the cars in the parking lot were showing lots of different cities from all over Northrhine-Westphalia and even farther away.
Kicking things off were Deny Everything who unfortunately played to a small crowd with lots of people still standing outside (the show was sold out, by the way. Was anyone surprised?) or hanging around at the bars. The venue itself was way too big for a small band like them, but it seemed they had their share of fun and their show was good as well.
Next up were Waterdown and noone, really noone knew why those guys had to play at this show. They've been around for quite some time now and I think I once heard or read somewhere that they were the German first band on Victory Records. Which at the time was something they could brag about. I bought their first CD back in the days, but only because they had a coverversion of Slime's "Ettikette tötet" on there. The rest of the music was simply boring metalcore stuff. And nothing has changed today. Still boring crap really noone cares about. Oh well, such bands are always a welcome excuse to get yourself refreshed and order a drink at the bar.
The main act then let the people wait for quite some time. With Missy Elliot's "Get Your Freak On" (or whatever that song is called, I just can't seem to really tell them apart) they entered the stage, your usual fanfare was playing and they started off with "New Direction". No surprises here. They went on to play the hits, they even did some coverversions (amongst others notably "New York Crew", "Dancefloor Justice" or "Pushed Too Far"), the people were having fun in front of the stage, there were bodies flying all over the place, singalongs, fingerpointing, you name it.
Still, I just didn't really got into this. The first half hour of this 70 minute set to me looked rather like being on the verge of turning into something ridiculous. I don't know if I raised my expectations too high or whatever I was expecting, but to me this was more like some coverband doing a show with GB songs and some extras. It took some time until the band settled in. At first they were just standing on stage, playing their songs and basically doing nothing. Apart from Civ who was running around on stage, but to be honest, we all seen singers do this numerous times. Again, this is just me, people were having fun up front and maybe I was just annoyed by the light show that kept shining right into my face. But this wasn't something I will place high up in my all time favourite show list. It was solid, no doubt. But nothing special. Just another rock show.
Kicking things off were Deny Everything who unfortunately played to a small crowd with lots of people still standing outside (the show was sold out, by the way. Was anyone surprised?) or hanging around at the bars. The venue itself was way too big for a small band like them, but it seemed they had their share of fun and their show was good as well.
Next up were Waterdown and noone, really noone knew why those guys had to play at this show. They've been around for quite some time now and I think I once heard or read somewhere that they were the German first band on Victory Records. Which at the time was something they could brag about. I bought their first CD back in the days, but only because they had a coverversion of Slime's "Ettikette tötet" on there. The rest of the music was simply boring metalcore stuff. And nothing has changed today. Still boring crap really noone cares about. Oh well, such bands are always a welcome excuse to get yourself refreshed and order a drink at the bar.
The main act then let the people wait for quite some time. With Missy Elliot's "Get Your Freak On" (or whatever that song is called, I just can't seem to really tell them apart) they entered the stage, your usual fanfare was playing and they started off with "New Direction". No surprises here. They went on to play the hits, they even did some coverversions (amongst others notably "New York Crew", "Dancefloor Justice" or "Pushed Too Far"), the people were having fun in front of the stage, there were bodies flying all over the place, singalongs, fingerpointing, you name it.
Still, I just didn't really got into this. The first half hour of this 70 minute set to me looked rather like being on the verge of turning into something ridiculous. I don't know if I raised my expectations too high or whatever I was expecting, but to me this was more like some coverband doing a show with GB songs and some extras. It took some time until the band settled in. At first they were just standing on stage, playing their songs and basically doing nothing. Apart from Civ who was running around on stage, but to be honest, we all seen singers do this numerous times. Again, this is just me, people were having fun up front and maybe I was just annoyed by the light show that kept shining right into my face. But this wasn't something I will place high up in my all time favourite show list. It was solid, no doubt. But nothing special. Just another rock show.
Thursday, 4 October 2007
MLB & NPB: Entering the postseason
So this is actually my first time watching a postseason unfold on television. because it's so hard to get any footage of the games over here the only time before this year I was able to watch a baseball match was in 1991 when the Minnesota Twins and the Atlanta Braves were playing in the World Series. They actually showed those matches on cable TV.So as always when it comes to deciding games there's always a huge fuzz about what's going on and what's going to happen and so on. With the Phillies clinching their first division title since 1993 and the Rockies an a blazing run winning their tiebreaker against the Padres in the 13th inning you couldn't ask for more excitement, I guess. To someone who has always been watching football which only takes place on the weekend it's still a mystery why you have to play 162 games to get to this point. Well, at least there's a game everyday for almost 6 months.
So the Phillies lost to Colorado in Game 1 (2:4), the Red Sox crashed the Angels (4:0) at Fenway and the Cubs started their postseason campaign with a loss against the Diamondbacks at Arizona (3:1). Today, the Yankees and the Indians will take action for the first time.
It seems things are falling into place in Japan as well. I still don't get the mode by which they determine who plays against who in postseason. As far as I found out they used to have just the Japan Series after the regular season in which the respective league pennant winners played against each other in a seven game series. Not so nowadays. The league tables on Japan Times Online show three teams in each division who claimed a playoff spot. The Central League will have the Yomiuri Giants, the Chunichi Dragons and the Hanshin Tigers, the Pacific League will feature the Nippon Ham Fighters, the Softbank Hawks and the Chiba Lotte Marines. Who will play against who is still a mystery to me.
Monday, 1 October 2007
Germany's the World Champion of Football - again!
Germany's Women's National Football Team is one - if not THE best team in European football and now they've done it again. They won the final of the 2007 Women's World Cup in China yesterday and now as I'm writing this the team gets a very warm reception at the Frankfurt City Hall in front of around 20.000 fans. The beat Brazil 2-0, a match that had been labelled as the clash between German precision against Brazilian finesse. It's true, the Brazilian side had the better chances and they had way more than the German women. But in the end they women's team did just the same thing the men's team used to do over a long time: play solid, score goals and win tournaments. Gary Lineker once said that football is a game where 22 people play against each other and in the end the Germans always win. Germany scored 21 goals and conceded none. Goalkeeper Nadine Angerer didn't have to fetch a baal out of the net for 540 minutes. By doing so she even beat the record set up by Italian Goalkeeper Walter Zenga at the 1990 World Cup in Italy. They outclassed South American champions Argentina 11-0 in their opener, they won against Japan, the lost their only points against England (0-0), they beat the mysterious team from North Korea (3-0), they won against Norway (3-0) and then in the final they won against what is considered to be the best team in the cup, Brazil.
I first saw a Women's football match during the World Cup in the USA in 1999, when Germany played against the hosts in the quarterfinal. A thrilling 2-3 loss for Germany, but it had it all. Wonderful passing, beautiful goals, nice effort and really good play. It's by far nicer to watch a women's game than at some point the hacking and slashing in a men's match.Unfortunately the only coverage the women get is when they play their cup final in Germany before the men's final. The highest division, the Bundesliga, isn't televised. So it's kind of hard to keep track on what's happening there. What they need is a professional league to keep up the momentum. Maybe this will change if Germany is awarded to host the Women's World Cup in 2011. If they get it I'm going to a match, I swear!
Weekend Round-up: Shows, shows, shows
So Friday started off with that show in Dortmund. And since I hate to repeat myself, I will just give the link here.
On Saturday then I was really wasted when I got up in the morning. Let's face it, I'm just not used to getting to bed this early in the morning. And every time I think I want to sleep way into the afternoon hours there's always some idiot in my neighbourhood who's redecorating his or her room. So no sleep 'til the next show and on this Saturday evening Kommando Sonne-nmilch were playing at Gebäude 9. I completely forgot about that show and only remembered it when I saw the poster for the Dortund show the day before. So I headed to the other side of the river and arrived at the venue at 8 pm. And noone's there. Which is strange, since all of the predecessors of Kommando Sonne-nmilch were sure to at least get a good attendance each time they played in Cologne. So me and the guys I met up with there had a beer first and then waited until 10 pm for the show to start. The music was just as expected, but the stage was fun. The whole band was looking like they were working for some construction company and in the back of the whole stage there was a huge plastic chainsaw. Great picture.
The show finished up early with just one band playing so we sat in the café a little bit longer, only to get annoyed by some dorkheads on speed who were climbing chairs and tables. I got home at around 1.30 am and prepared for the next day.
On Sunday Cologne's finest were coming home from a two week tour of Europe. Cobretti and Deny Everything teamed up with Tackleberry to play a show at the Sonic Ballroom. I have to admit the Ballroom is more and more becoming a punkrock institution in Cologne. There's shows almost every night and although I have to admit that most of them are not really my cup of tea I really appreciate what the people are doing there. They should just broaden the variety of different flavours a little more. Setting up a show like yesterday's is a step into the right direction. This could be considered to be the rebirth of Cologne hardcore pride. It's been quite a long time since I've seen an underground hardcore show attended by so many people with such good bands playing. Tackleberry started the whole thing with their positive and classic stop and go hardcore. The crowd seemed to like it and there were people bouncing around in front of the stage early.
Next up (after a very quick changeover. I REALLY like that!) were Deny Everything and their Lifetime-influenced melodic hardcore just had the same effect on the audience in the first rows. Stagedives and highfives, just getting in gear for their show with Gorilla Biscuits, I guess.
Cobretti were the headliner for the night, and their more aggressive and mean brand of hardcore fit perfectly to end the evening. Although singer Carsten seemed to have caught a cold, the sound was thundering and the crowd was having fun. Again, I have to say that I haven't seen anything like this in Cologne for a long time. Around 70 people turning up for a show on a Sunday evening with only local bands playing. This is great stuff and I really hope there's more to come in the future.
So this ends a weekend which I haven't had in a long time. It really was fun to hang out with a lot of people, meeting some faces I hadn't seen in a long time, just having a good time.
On Saturday then I was really wasted when I got up in the morning. Let's face it, I'm just not used to getting to bed this early in the morning. And every time I think I want to sleep way into the afternoon hours there's always some idiot in my neighbourhood who's redecorating his or her room. So no sleep 'til the next show and on this Saturday evening Kommando Sonne-nmilch were playing at Gebäude 9. I completely forgot about that show and only remembered it when I saw the poster for the Dortund show the day before. So I headed to the other side of the river and arrived at the venue at 8 pm. And noone's there. Which is strange, since all of the predecessors of Kommando Sonne-nmilch were sure to at least get a good attendance each time they played in Cologne. So me and the guys I met up with there had a beer first and then waited until 10 pm for the show to start. The music was just as expected, but the stage was fun. The whole band was looking like they were working for some construction company and in the back of the whole stage there was a huge plastic chainsaw. Great picture.The show finished up early with just one band playing so we sat in the café a little bit longer, only to get annoyed by some dorkheads on speed who were climbing chairs and tables. I got home at around 1.30 am and prepared for the next day.
On Sunday Cologne's finest were coming home from a two week tour of Europe. Cobretti and Deny Everything teamed up with Tackleberry to play a show at the Sonic Ballroom. I have to admit the Ballroom is more and more becoming a punkrock institution in Cologne. There's shows almost every night and although I have to admit that most of them are not really my cup of tea I really appreciate what the people are doing there. They should just broaden the variety of different flavours a little more. Setting up a show like yesterday's is a step into the right direction. This could be considered to be the rebirth of Cologne hardcore pride. It's been quite a long time since I've seen an underground hardcore show attended by so many people with such good bands playing. Tackleberry started the whole thing with their positive and classic stop and go hardcore. The crowd seemed to like it and there were people bouncing around in front of the stage early. Next up (after a very quick changeover. I REALLY like that!) were Deny Everything and their Lifetime-influenced melodic hardcore just had the same effect on the audience in the first rows. Stagedives and highfives, just getting in gear for their show with Gorilla Biscuits, I guess.
Cobretti were the headliner for the night, and their more aggressive and mean brand of hardcore fit perfectly to end the evening. Although singer Carsten seemed to have caught a cold, the sound was thundering and the crowd was having fun. Again, I have to say that I haven't seen anything like this in Cologne for a long time. Around 70 people turning up for a show on a Sunday evening with only local bands playing. This is great stuff and I really hope there's more to come in the future.
So this ends a weekend which I haven't had in a long time. It really was fun to hang out with a lot of people, meeting some faces I hadn't seen in a long time, just having a good time.
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