Interview with Mani Honigstein of Footbo

I had a long con­ver­sa­tion with Mani Honig­stein, who is the brains behind the foot­ball social net­work­ing site Footbo. An avid Bay­ern Munich fan, I talked to him about the sum­mer trans­fers and his views on the sea­son ahead for the Bavar­ian giants.

Tell us a lit­tle about Footbo, and what you are try­ing to accom­plish with it.

In 2007, when social net­work­ing was really tak­ing off, we com­bined my access to ven­ture cap­i­tal through work with Rafael’s access to play­ers. We added Gabriel Mar­cotti and Guillem Bal­ague to the advi­sory board and started Footbo. We are doing a lot to change the lay­out of the site and we are we are con­stantly improv­ing the interface.

In gen­eral, Footbo is really try­ing to bring a lot of the online foot­ball needs to one place. We are on the cross­road of being a social net­work and a con­tent site. Now that we have the con­cept right, we are mov­ing into new lan­guages, such as Por­tuguese because Brazil is such a social-networking savvy coun­try, as well as mov­ing into new mar­kets with improved fea­tures, such as player rat­ings with com­men­tary. The feed­back and usage pat­terns are very encouraging.

So for a lit­tle clar­i­fi­ca­tion, if you don’t use Footbo, you really should. You can really do a lot via set­ting up teams your fans of (I have every Bun­desliga side as well as Malmo, Tot­ten­ham and Rubin Kazan) as well as play­ers. In addi­tion it has a friend­ing sys­tem much like a Face­book or MySpace. But unlike Face­book, here you won’t have to read about your friend’s baby’s eat­ing pat­terns. There are a lot of unique and fun fea­tures and it is a great repos­i­tory of news. I highly rec­om­mend the site and feel free to friend me.

How do you feel about Van Gaal’s hir­ing and do you see it peter­ing out or lead­ing to properity?

I feel good about it. Van Gaal is prob­a­bly a bit old school, but I believe he will bring to Bay­ern what we need most: con­ti­nu­ity. It was a mis­take to fire Mag­ath in the third sea­son and Bay­ern needs a coach that can be with the team for the long haul, 5 years or so. Bay­ern will always always have the pres­sure to be Ger­man cham­pion and I believe with Van Gaal we can have have a long streak of championships.  

Con­sid­er­ing the lineup you cur­rently have, what kind of for­ma­tion do you see Van Gaal employ­ing? 

4–4-2 for sure.

Do you see dif­fer­ing for­ma­tions for the league and Cham­pi­ons League?

Not really. Last year we played against Barcelona with only one real striker, Toni. It was a disaster.

Is there a for­ma­tion you would prefer?

I would love to see Bay­ern move to a 4–3-3, but we do not have the play­ers for it. So it looks like it will be 4–4-2 again. Gomez and Klose will play up front.

Can the dress­ing room deal with 5 for­ward, 4–5 attack­ing mids and 3 hold­ing mids?

This will be one of the major chal­lenges of for Van Gaal. Ner­linger said that the squad is too big. I assume that some will leave us in the win­ter. My guess is Toni, Ottl and maybe Lell.

Defen­sively how will you cope with the loss of Lucio?

I loved Lucio, but he had played poorly for the last two years. He was a dan­ger for Bay­ern, as his for­ays for­ward left us exposed too often. I do not think that we will miss him much. The new defense looks solid. Van Buyten was amaz­ing at Ham­burg, but never really made it at Bay­ern. Maybe this is his year. And while Van Gaal has said he prefers a left foot at LCB, he has used DiMiche­lis and Van Buyten so far. Gor­litz isn’t good enough. Niether is Lell. And Breno needed time on loan to get expe­ri­ence, but that won’t hap­pen now as he will be called upon along with Braafheid for depth in the league and Europe.

Who wor­ries you the most in the league?

To be hon­est no one really wor­ries me. Last year showed that it was Bay­ern who sim­ply could not win the Cham­pi­onship. No other team is strong enough to beat us in the long run. When­ever, Bay­ern is some­what weak (like last sea­son) there is the chance for a sur­prise. But it always depends on Bay­ern. I do fear Schalke, because I really believe in Mag­ath. But not this sea­son. He needs time to build some­thing there.

Your first 5 game include 4 teams that could chal­lenge for the title, includ­ing Hof­fen­heim, Wolfs­burg, Dort­mund and Werder.  How impor­tant will a good start be to your chances of regain­ing the title?

It is very impor­tant, because the media at Bay­ern is crazy. You lose three games and every­body gets ner­vous. Then you have Rum­men­nige, Beck­en­bauer and Hoe­ness all send­ing dif­fer­ent mes­sages, ex-players such as Matthaeu giv­ing their opin­ion and here you go: the cri­sis is there. But Hof­fene­him is not sta­ble enough, Wolfs­burg will have a hard time to adjust to the new sit­u­a­tion, Dort­mund is still mid­dle class and Werder lost the best player of the league !

You got most of your trans­fers done early in the sum­mer.  The rest of the league was sig­nif­i­cantly behind you.  Will that aide or abet you as you seem to need to cull a few play­ers? And what do you make of these transfers?

Well Gomez is good, but way too expen­sive. For that kind of money you could have had a Ben­zema. I do not know why we bought Olic and Tymoschuk. These are the kind of trans­fers that have never worked out for Bay­ern in the past. Over­all I was a bit angry at Bay­ern, because it seemed they do not have a clear vision. They wanted Diego, but only tried once it was too late. Diego has been the best player of the league in the last three years and only at the very end did they make a move for him. And once they real­ized they couldn’t get him, they didn’t try to get some­one else. The same for goal­keep­ers. It is obvi­ous that both Butt and Rens­ing are not good enough.

So do you think there will be a move for a keeper?

No, while they real­ize that Rens­ing is not the suc­ces­sor to Oliver Kahn, they feel they can get away with him for another year. They made a soft bid for Manuel Neuer this past sum­mer, but in the long run, they are going to go for Neuer or Adler so that they have the best Ger­man keeper.

will Ribery be at the Allianz on Sep­tem­ber 1st?

Yes. It looks to me that Bay­ern will have Ribery for one more year and then he is off to Real Madrid. This could help the league in view­er­ship as peo­ple will be inter­ested in see­ing him.

Con­sid­er­ing that Van Gaal is a major fan of Wes­ley Snei­jder, does it suprise you that Bay­ern haven’t made a move for the Real play­maker?

Yes. At one point I was sure that Ribery would go to Real and we would get both Snei­jder and Van Der Vaart. This chap­ter is not over and I am sure the trans­fer of Ribery will hap­pen lat­est next sum­mer.

What other deals do you see hap­pen­ing before September?

Not much to be hon­est. The Bun­desliga starts next week and I think this is the cur­rent squad. I believe that if Toni will not play, he will move to Italy in Win­ter. That is a safe bet in my opin­ion.

Muller and Bud­stu­ber make the jump this year from BMII.  What can you tell us about these two youngsters?

I do not know much about them, but I like both. I wish Kroos had stayed with Bay­ern and not moved to Lev­erkusen. Bud­stu­ber could make it to the first 11 on occas­sion. Muller will prob­a­bly not be able to make it with Ribery, Schwe­in­steiger and the rest already in place. But it is good to see some young tal­ent at Bay­ern.

How will you fare in the Cham­pi­ons League?

Good ques­tion. Well, you always need a bit of luck. Last year we got Barca early.…in the Quar­ter Finals and had obvi­ously no real chance. The team and the coach have a lot of expe­ri­ence. With a bit of luck we could reach the Semi-Final, but I can’t see us advance any fur­ther. Not yet, at least.

Tagged as: Felix Magath, Footbo, Franck Ribery, Louis Van Gaal, Luca Toni, Lucio, Mario Gomez, Michael Rensing, Raphael Honigstein, Social Networking