Rosicky is an interesting case. I think he is a player who flatters to deceive. When one sees him playing -- with his good to excellent technique, dribbling, speed, passing and shot -- one would think that he is a great asset. But when one looks a bit closer and sees that he has scored only 14 times and only assisted 18 times in 121 games one begins to see that he seriously lacks effectivity for an offensive midfielder. Lars Ricken has better numbers. Even in the 2001/02 season in which Dortmund won the title -- and which was probably Rosicky's best -- he only scored and assisted 5 and 9 times, respectively, which are good numbers but not great ones. Dortmund's title win had more to do with having a solid defense and three strongly performing strikers in Amoroso, Ewerthon and Koller that season. When one sees him playing -- sometimes much -- better for the Czechs one is tempted to think that he is either mostly playing well when his team is far superior to the opposition and/or that he is mentally fragile and needs the right atmosthere to perform well. In the coming season I expect Dortmund's defence including their defensive midfield to perform well but if Dortmund is going to challenge for top spots this season I think they will require their strikers to perform very well, foremostly. If Koller, Buckley and Smolarek are having good seasons there might be hope for qualifying for Europe. However, Dortmund's greatest problem might be that they have no (proven) depth. If they have many injury problems they might even struggle to avoid relegation.
That's almost precisely what I said on my list!!! Great minds do think alike no matter how much they disagree! LOL!!
He looked very impressive. He was better than most Dortmund players on the game, esp. Metzelder. Arg...Metzelder's on my kicker team too! 4.5 kicker rating...shoot.