Hello, this is correct! The decision should be done about 6 weeks before the game. At this link you can see the dates. It is the '27.Spieltag' (27th matchday): http://www.kicker.de/fussball/bundesliga/spieltag/tabelle/liga/1/tabelle/1/saison/2006-07/spieltag/27 Ciao Hans
well since it is so close to the winter break period, there is some good news for VfB...Cacau will be staying until 2010. I really think Cacau can develop into a leader up front for this team. Especially when Gomez isn't always performing at his best. We all know the quality of Cacau, especially with that brilliant strike in the 2. Spieltag against Bielefeld.
Cacau is good. He can dribble well, shoot well, often pass well. The only thing missing from him is the effectiveness of a great striker. But he has been good these last 3 and a half seasons, so i'm also glad he's prolonging his contract
Hello, agreed, I'm also quite satisfied they expanded his contract. He has 5 goals right now, gomez 8, there is only Klose/Hunt a better pair of strikers. Maakay/Pizarro have also 8/5. But I still hope that Thomason will be back next year. Ciao Hans
I hope for Tomasson too...i'm certain he can't have suddenly become a terrible striker out of nowhere. I think he could still return to form for us in the next year once his injuries leave him alone.
Kaiserslautern seems to be interested in Meissner. Meissner has been a regular at VfB for 5 years, but he really sucked last season and hasn't gotten any chances this year, playing about 10 minutes. I don't really mind if he leaves, he's done his part for the club, but his time has past. He would be a help to Kaiserslauten though.
Meißner is my favourite player, I just like his attitude. But he definately won't get a lot of chances in Stuttgart any more. So I think it would be good for him to leave. If he goes to Kaiserslautern, I wish him all the best.
Yeah, I think Meisse should leave VfB, but only because I know he plays with so much heart. There really isn't a place for him any longer on the pitch in Stuttgart, so I would rather he not rot away on the bench when he could make some positive contributions to 'lautern.
Also from me good luck to Meißner for the rest of his career. Doubt he will be in Stuttgart after winter as he already talked about leaving a few months ago. Maybe he'll come back after he has stoped playing. Not sure about Tomasson. Quess sending away an injured player in the winterbreak would be bad manners and he deserves another chance but I don't believe he'll make it in Stuttgart. We need to play a good second half of session. Bundesliga miss us internationally.
AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A freakin' tie with Cottbus. My team is giving me heartburn.
A draw is frustrating, but against a team like Cottbus, a draw is likely. I think we are just too tired at this point in the season to break down a defensive style of team. The winter break should serve us well and we can come back fresh and fit for the Rueckrunde. Besides that we can look at the table fairly comfortably in 4th at 32 points with Berlin in 5th at 27 points and 6th place taken by either Leverkusen or Dortmund with a possible 25 points or Nuernberg with 23 points.
It was a pretty lousy showing by the team. I was watching the match on GolTV and the commentator was hilarious though.... anyone know who that was? Probably the pro-Bayern guy.
I disagree on this. With a ref making a random call every 20 seconds it's simply impossible to play good football. Just another referee performance I would not have imagined before this session. Players obvisiously need a break after the cup-game. But we also need Veh to make some extra training: "Diving and dirty fouls like Bayern München". We are just gifting away free points playing fair.
The match seem like a slugfest, a foul every twenty seconds...well, at least from the ref point of view, I had the feeling that something was about to happen but never did, very frustrating. Things should be better after the winter break, but makes me wonder how the team will perform next year with the added games from the Champions league or UEFA cup, Herr Veh may have to start a rotation of players or increase the phisycal conditioning.
he does about half of the bundesliga matches on GolTv. I agree, the guy is hilarious. He's completely ruthless in criticizing players when they make any sort of mistake.
well a convincing 4-1 win at Bochum in the Pokal with Gomez, Hitzlsperger (2), and Cacau tallying the goals for VfB. on a sour note: announced immediately after the game was the news that Timo Hildebrand and VfB Stuttgart will be parting ways after 30 June 2007. Apparently the club made their "top" offer in terms of both pay and length of contract and Timo said he needed to consider his options. The club then withdrew the offer and told Hildebrand that he will move on after the season is finished. I find this to be sort of bittersweet. I like Timo for being so loyal to the club for so long (since 1996) and for giving us some great performances over the years including going for a record 884 minutes without conceding a goal in the Bundesliga; however, recently his performances have been mostly, good but not great. I feel this is partly down to the fact he would rather be somewhere else. I can't help but bring up all the negativity he showed through the past couple of seasons when things weren't going well. Especially when he wasn't performing at top level himself. Anyways, I wish him well wherever he may go, though I haven't heard transfer speculation beyond possibly to HSV (I can't imagine him in the 2.Liga though ) As far as bringing in Hildebrand's replacement...who are the club looking at? At one time I heard Enke. That wouldn't be bad as he has put in some good performances for a club, in my opinion, below the talent level of VfB.
Well he was never happy being in Stuttgart and always wanted to move to a top league so I quess he made the right decision. He still has prestigue from his performance 2 years ago and being 2nd Keeper of Germany. I'd put him in some above average spanish or english club next session. Sad as I really liked having one of our own talents in goal. But as a german saying: people on the move should not be stoped. Also Delpierre and Meira will now sleep easier.
I wouldn't exactly call it loyality. First time he had established himself in first team he wanted to go. Just didn't get any offers. Names I heard are Enke (free agent next year), Schäfer (only 1 more year with Hannover), Fromlowitz (another talent of Kaiserslautern), Langer (own talent) and the wierdest: Lehmann with Langer taking over in a few years. Club keeps silent of course but I would also bet on Enke. Improvement over Hildebrand IMHO.
Thanks for the interesting bit of info. I had no idea that he has wanted to leave all along. I guess it just makes his departure less difficult to take, especially if we have a better keeper in our sights.
I'm also thinking Enke. I wouldn't call him an improvement, but he is definatly on par with Hildebrandt. Anyhow, Enke would be the best availiable option. I just hope that Hildebrandt won't break down in the remaining half of the season. Two years ago he wasn't the most reliable keeper while negotiating his new contract.
According to the Stuttgarter Nachrichten, there are three candidates who might succeed Hildebrand: 1. Robert Enke whose contract with Hannover ends next Summer but who isn't sure whether he should leave Hannover. 2. Nürnberg's Raphael Schäfer would cost about 1.5 Mill € and seems to fancy a move to a bigger team. 3. Austrian U21 international Michael Langer who is third goalie in Stuttgart at the moment, but according to Stuttgart officials "not ready yet". I still think that it's going to be Enke though. I'm sorry Fräulein...
I haven't had internet the last few days, but here's what i thought of the recent games / news. Against Cottbus, yes, we did play lousy, but i think three points were still stolen from us. In the first hald, Da Silva(the Cottbus Da Silva) should've definitely gotten a red card and restricted Cottbus to 10 men for the last 60 minutes of that game. And 15 minutes before the end, a clear penalty wasn't given to us(and Gomez was even yellowcarded for a dive!). This was, in fact, the second time in 3 matches that a clear penalty wasn't given to us. The other was against Mainz, and well, if we had a little more luck(it may be absurd to call a referee making a correct decision to be good luck, but with the pathetic Bundesliga refs., that is the case nowadays), we would've gotten 9 points from our last 3 games and been equal at the top. Nonetheless, it's still been a brilliant frist half of the season, i atleast never expected us to be this high up, and if we play a solid second half, we can expect to be back in Europe next September. I still don't want to dream of the Champions league, if we make the uefa cup, i'm happy. Now, the Pokal game against Bochum was great! I was very nervous going into the match - Bochum had been gaining in form and we were lucky to beat them at home, and we had looked worse against Cottbus. However, the team totally surprised me by trashing Bochum which was a great end to a great second half of the year . I must admit it has definitely gotten me dreaming. With Bremen, Schalke, ScheissBayern, Hamburg, Dortmund and so on and so forth out, i think we're the best team left in the cup. Obviously, we still will need luck, but i really believe we have a chance to make it all the way to the final! Finally, on Timo, i wish him the best of luck wherever he goes(i heard Valencia). Out of the possible goalkeepers who could replace him, i hope we get Enke. He would, i think, even be an upgrade on Timo abilitywise. Schaefer i'm not convinced about, and Langer i also think isn't ready.