That he's not playing is a head scratcher. He should be good enough to start for Stuttgart regularly. Heck, he was one of the better Bayern players in pre-season.
The myth of Julian Green's world-class pre-season persists. He scored three goals against a sleep-walking Inter team, which proceeded to lose by even greater margins against other opposition. Otherwise, he was "meh."
I mean, he was decent, but his pre-season was not a strong indication of quality, in my opinion. Early signs are pointing in that direction, but hopefully he goes on a strong run of form. We need another quality winger opposite of Pulisic. Or a deeper forward pool, if it turns that way.
The person playing ahead of him could just be better. Stuttgart does have some talented players on loan right.
Seems like Wolf opted to play conservatively, keeping in mind they were on the road against a upper table team, the short week and perhaps the distraction from the Großkreutz drama. He dropped both Green and Asano, committing more fully to sitting back and countering after VfB suffered a red card. http://www.stuttgarter-nachrichten....aft.371b00c9-3e58-4c57-8188-a85347b9e66b.html
They're fist in the league with 4 points over Union. I guess that also plays part in keeping things as they are. It's basically what was happening with Yedlin before the Anita injury. Yedlin was, to the eye, the better of the two, but they were doing fine with the status quo.
Given that Green started the first 4 matches coming off the winter break, he is already part of the status quo. He won't be undroppable unless he establishes himself as a two-way player who can go 90.
At Bayern, by the end of August, it was clear that delineating Green as a striker only meant that Green would never play. Lewandowski would play 90, Green would sit, the other 5 attackers would compete for the other spots, and if Lewandowski got hurt then one of those 5 would fill in. There's a reason Ancelotti was so generous with his praise of Green - it's tough to find a player content to sit behind 90 minute lock players like Messi, Ronaldo and Lewandowski. Thus, even if Green doesn't consistently maintain a starting spot at Stuttgart, then I will still view this as an improvement over Bayern.
I don't know - I always thought being van der Saar's or Kahn's #2 was the best job in the world, as long as they never got hurt or suspended. You could always be the second best keeper in the world, in your own mind... but get paid gobs to spend Sunday's watching some great footie from the good seats. Of course, I'm a slacker by nature...
^THIS. Though I'm glad Howard decided not to stay forever at United riding the bench. Though he'd have loads of medals had he done so
and BSC Old Boys too. Saw a funny post on Reddit recently where, one weekend, the average starting lineup of Old Boys was younger than the lineup for Young Boys.
3 changes in #VfB line-up for #EBSVfB: @BenPavard28, @AsaTaku29 & @J_Green37 come in for Marcin #Kaminski, Berkay #Özcan & Josip #Brekalo. pic.twitter.com/m96bNdkXub— VfB Stuttgart_int (@VfB_int) March 10, 2017