The Sync: Borussia Mönchengladbach

Gladbach’s vic­tory over the stalwart’s of the league, Werder Bre­men, gave us a glimpse at a team that has been revi­tal­ized under Jos Luhukay and Chris­t­ian Ziege, and could well be in for a bright future. The addi­tion of Michael Bradley added another young inter­na­tional the next day. So what is it about Glad­bach? Is this another false dawn or is their return to glory imminent?

Much will depend on their abil­ity to hold onto Marko Marin, who didn’t live up the hype, but exceeded it. It was like hear­ing all about Heath Ledger as the Joker and then going to see Dark Knight only to real­ize that your friends had under­sold him. Watch­ing Gladbach’s per­for­mance against Werder, it would seem that this young side is more about a return to glory if Luhukay, Marin and the sup­port­ing cast can be kept in place. They are a bril­liant defend­ing side, with an acute tim­ing for a tackle. They broke up play in the mid­dle, forced Werder out­side and then smoth­ered their for­wards so that they were able to neu­tral­ize the most lethal attack in Germany.

Let’s take a look back at the week that was.

1) Michael Bradley

The young Amer­i­can inter­na­tional joined the team from Heeren­veen of the Dutch Ere­di­visie near the close of the trans­fer win­dow. While, it is a fan­tas­tic sign­ing for the Foals, it isn’t obvi­ous what the plans for the ver­sa­tile mid­fielder are at this junc­ture. While his scor­ing record in Hol­land was impres­sive and speaks towards his box-to-box abil­i­ties, he has often been deployed as a hold­ing mid­fielder for the US National team. It could be that he is deployed along side Alber­man to form a potent dou­ble pivot. Or he could play deep and run onto the ball, with Rob Friend’s abil­ity to hold the ball pro­vid­ing him the same scor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties that Daniel Alves did at Heeren­veen. He is join­ing a team that should play well to his strengths. And in return he pro­vides options in the mid­field for the for­mer champs to help their push to stay up.

2) Gal Alberman

The rea­son Bradley won’t see sole DM duties is due to the dogged play of the Israeli inter­na­tional, who just joined recently. I had really looked for­ward to watch­ing Gladbach’s first game because of Marko Marin, but there were more than a few play­ers that pleas­antly sur­prised me after their vic­tory over Werder Bre­men. This ball win­ner was def­i­nitely high on the list of play­ers that impressed. He shad­owed super­star Diego for the entire game, leav­ing him no room in the mid­dle to cre­ate and forc­ing the Bundesliga’s biggest stars to move to the wings to have any effect on the game. He is also tech­ni­cally gifted, tac­ti­cally astute and calm on the ball. I don’t think it was coin­ci­dence that his sub­sti­tu­tion was fol­lowed by both Werder goals. If this type of per­for­mance becomes the norm, he might just be con­sid­ered the best DM in the Bun­desliga by year’s end.

3) Karim Matmour

He is another new sign­ing in attack. This was his first start and he played in the right-hand chan­nel to great effect. He set up the sec­ond goal and scored the first. But he was pro­vided the per­fect coun­ter­bal­ance to Marin so that Werder couldn’t focus on just one side of the pitch when defend­ing. He was able to move to the left when Marin moved right and still have some pos­i­tive input on the game.

4) Christofer Heimeroth

Bril­liant game! He had 12 saves and wasn’t at fault for either goal. He got a hand on the first goal to save it as it had deflected towards goal. Unfor­tu­nately at a stretch he could only palm it out of goal, leav­ing it for Pizarro to clean up. The sec­ond goal was a bril­liant free kick from Diego. Other than one dropped ball on the goal line that cost them noth­ing, he was flaw­less. And it is just one more rea­son that the Bun­desliga is spoiled rot­ten with great keepers.

To be fair, the defense seems to be set­tling after the open­ing game shelling. Daems and Brouw­ers kept Pizarro and Almeida/Rosenborg in check through­out the game. It wasn’t until they lost the shield­ing of Alber­man and Schaaf went to three for­wards that they started to panic and found them­selves vul­ner­a­ble at times. Even so, they were only cul­pa­ble for the first.

5) Marko Marin

I have con­tacted Inter­pol. After Glad­bach kid­napped Lionel Messi, dyed his hair and forced him to play, it was time some­body did the right thing. What a rev­e­la­tion this kid is. In a league blessed with fan­tas­tic #10, great wingers and phe­nom­e­nal for­wards, he has all the attrib­utes to be the best of them. If Man­ches­ter City isn’t putting a 40 mil­lion bid on him in Jan­u­ary, I’ll eat my hat (it’s a choco­late hat). This kid has speed and skill to equal the diminu­tive Argen­tine. He has the same low cen­ter of grav­ity to off­set his size in a phys­i­cal league. He can play in the mid­dle and on the right as well as in his nat­ural posi­tion. He made two sec­ond half crosses with his right foot that would have made Beck­ham jeal­ous. Oh and he can defend. In a nut­shell, he’s the com­plete pack­age, and his exclu­sion from the Euro’s might well have cost Ger­many the title.

And yes, just like Heath Ledger, all my hype won’t make up for your first expe­ri­ence. Go! Watch! Revel!

Tagged as: Bremen, Christian Ziege, Claudio Pizzaro, Daniel Alves, Diego, Filip Daems, Gal Alberman, Gladbach, Heerenveen, Jos Luhukay, Karim Matmour, Marko Marin, Michael Bradley, Rob Friend, Roel Brouwers, Thomas Schaaf