Hitz LP Weigl Akanji Guerreiro Delaney Witsel Pulisic Götze Bruun Larsen Alcacer Bürki and Diallo are out. Sancho couldn't train all week and is on the bench.
1:0 Pulisic. It was a pretty lethargic game so far. Sancho and Reus are missed. No speed and creativity in the build up play. But hopefully this goal will open up some space, now.
Yes good pass from Weigl and cross from Raphael. Delaney with a header across goal. There is always hope even if it was only a fool's hope.
And another goalie blunder gifts a goal to our opponent. I know that mistakes can happen but this is amateur level...
Penalty for Düsseldorf, they miss. Both players went for the ball, not sure that is a pen. Hopefully there is no lasting effect for HItz because of that collision.
Holy shit, we almost managed to choke away another two goal lead against 10 men. I don't know how that is possible. It's obvious the team has problems with the nerves and the pressure. Bayern gets a draw and can limp to the title with another draw against Frankfurt. If we win in Gladbach, which will be hard, it would be the third best season for us and it would still be a season of lost opportunities. Just the lost leads against Hoffenheim and Bremen alone would have changed so much.
Except it is not. Not all Bundesliga seasons are created equally. This is a terrible Bundesliga, the weakest it has been for over a decade. So it is easier to get a high points total. Nearly all the talent has been stripped from the league. But there is still hope. I think we will lose the league on goal difference. Now try and tell me overpaying by 20 million for a quality player would not have been worth it?
Neither team deserves the title. Can't even name the outstanding player of the season in the league. Who will they give it to? Sancho?
Reus has been the outstanding player of the season and easily. Other players like Sancho, Havertz and Jovic too have had excellent seasons. The Leipzig centre backs and defenders as whole have been good. Thorgan and Brandt were excellent for half the season, the opposite halves.
The longer this drags on the more painful the Schalke loss, Bremen draw, Bayern disaster, Hoffenheim screwup get. Everybody is whining about this being a weak BL. Then what the hell is a strong BL?
The strong period of the Bundesliga began when the likes of Schweinsteiger and Lahm were in their primes, but the new excellent generation of Hummels, Gundogan, Muller, Neuer, Gotze, Reus, etc were all coming through. Add a few great signings like Lewandowski and Kagawa and the league was exceptionally strong. With the mass exodus of German talent and lack of great youngster coming through, led to the poor state of this Bundesliga. Before that the Bundesliga was very strong in the mid 90s to early 00s and the financial crisis, which hit clubs like Dortmund.
It's kind of a useless discussion due to a certain degree of subjectivity but that's too much hyperbole, from one extreme to the other. There is a negative development that needs to be countered but the league didn't go from exceptionally strong to downright terrible and the mass exodus of german talent is exaggerated as well. If we are talking about Europe, all those past years of the decade, it was basically only Bayern making long runs. We and Schalke both had one very good run. That's not exceptional for a league, only for one team. This year, we and Bayern went out against the finalists while Frankfurt from that terrible league almost made it to the EL finals. Incidentally, all the players you mentioned were from Bayern and Dortmund. That says nothing about the rest of the league which was the initial matter of the argument. I'd bet that this year's talent in teams like Leipzig, Frankfurt, Hoffenheim and Leverkusen would do just fine against our comparable competitors in the years 2010 till now.