Interview with Raphael Honigstein

Fol­low­ing a busy sea­son, Raphael Honig­stein of The Guardian and Footbo was kind enough to talk with me and address a few ques­tions I had about the end of the sea­son and the start to the silly season.

Which player(s) sur­prised you the most this season? 

a) Mis­i­movic. We knew he could play foot­ball, but not that well, nor that con­sis­tently. He became, along­side  Diego, the best cen­tral mid­fielder in the Bun­desliga. Quite a step-up.
 
b) Grafite. Looked a lit­tle slow and pon­der­ous in front of goal last sea­son. Dif­fer­ent story this time around. (prob­a­bly only half the player with­out Mis­i­movic and Dzeko)

c) Tro­chowski. In the Misimovic-mould of nearly-men in recent years, now a good rea­son to leave Schwe­in­steiger on the bench at the World Cup. 

Who was the most impor­tant player to his team?

Maybe Mario Gomez. He really car­ried the side, espe­cially in the sec­ond half of the sea­son, with his goals. 

We seem to becom­ing a league based on streaks: Stuttgart 2007; Hof­fen­heim — Hertha — Wolfs­burg this year. Which was more impres­sive: Stuttgart’s run two years ago, Hoffenheim’s start this year or Wolfsburg’s finish?

I’d say Hoffenheim’s and Wolfsburg’s runs were equally impres­sive on the face of it, but then Wolfs­burg had a semi-decent first half, too, and timed theirs much bet­ter. I think win­ning 14 out of 17 games in 2009 is unbe­liev­ably good.

All three pro­mo­tion sides sur­vived. Of the 3, who looks most likely to suf­fer a sopho­more slump?

Michael Frontzeck has already taken two teams down, so I wouldn’t be sur­prised if he got Glad­bach rel­e­gated as well. Köln’s chances will depend on who they can get as man­ager. Hoffe will be okay.

We lost our last East Ger­man team. What do you think East Ger­man foot­ball needs to do to make itself com­pet­i­tive?

Actu­ally, Union Berlin are going strong and things are hap­pen­ing at Leipzig. I don’t think any­thing in par­tic­u­lar needs to change. You just need a few good men with good ideas and lit­tle bit of money.

It seems that Mag­ath has some con­cerns with Schalke: aged back­line and a unbal­anced squad. How long do you think it will take for Mag­ath to get Schalke contending?

That really is one of the most inter­est­ing ques­tions for next sea­son. Rumors are that Schalke have very lit­tle money to spend, so he won’t be able to trans­form the team instantly over two sea­sons the way he did with VfL. He will surely get them fit­ter. But can this squad actu­ally play decent foot­ball? I’m not sure.

It’s a ques­tion I asked the last time we talked. With Wolfs­burg retain­ing the “gaffer” sys­tem and Schalke now being the sec­ond club to employ it, is there any chance of more teams adopt­ing the style? Or do you see Armin Veh fold­ing under the pres­sure of both jobs only to see Wolfs­burg return to the Sports Direc­tor method sooner rather than later?

I remem­ber talk­ing to you about that a year ago. I must admit I’m very sur­prised that the Bun­desliga has gone down that route. Of course, suc­cess breeds copy­cats and Mag­ath at Wolfs­burg is get­ting copied. Man­agers have become more con­fi­dent to ask for wider pow­ers. It seems like it will be the trend for the next few years, as even Bay­ern are giv­ing van Gaal more power than Klins­mann ever had. But you are right, these things can be cycli­cal. The first club who fires their man­ager and finds itself with 20 play­ers they don’t want will think very care­fully about the whole sys­tem again. 

Why is Hertha’s Lucien Favre mak­ing noise about leav­ing?  It would seem that Hertha’s upside is still con­sid­er­ably large.

He was flat­tered by the atten­tion from Bay­ern and HSV and used it polit­i­cally. His threat to walk was really a clever ulti­ma­tum: he forced Hertha to choose between him and Dieter Hoe­ness. Hoe­ness was fired two days ago. 

Do you know why Christophe Daum sud­denly left?

Money. And the chance to win titles and play inter­na­tion­ally. In his own mind, Daum is on a par with Mour­inho et al, so help­ing Köln to another mid-table fin­ish had lim­ited appeal for him. 

Last year, we saw the emer­gence of some new young man­agers in Jur­gen Klöpp and Bruno Lab­ba­dia. Both were fairly suc­cess­ful in their first cam­paign at the top level.  Why then do you think so many man­age­r­ial changes so far involve a merry-go-round approach rather than try­ing to find new blood like Dort­mund and Bayer 04 did last year?

Klopp was fairly estab­lished before Borus­sia went for him but it’s true: the Bun­desliga seems to have become quite risk-averse. Bet­ter the devil you know — it’s a con­se­quence of the Klins­mann deba­cle, prob­a­bly. 

With the team that Bay­ern seems to be build­ing this sum­mer: Van Gaal, Pra­jnic, Gomez, Olic, Boumjo­hann, as well as Snei­jder, Tymochuck and Pan­dev likely; It feels like a team, regard­less of Ribery’s impend­ing depar­ture, that on-paper are good enough to win Europe.  Do you think that we could see our first Ger­man team mak­ing a seri­ous run at the UCL since 2002?

Hmm, I don’t know. Gomez for Toni doesn’t really change that much. I like Olic as a defen­sive for­ward (copy­right Jonathan Wil­son). Tymoschuk should have been bought four years ago. Baumjo­hann won’t fea­ture much. Pra­jnic and Braafheid will be inter­est­ing although it’s never easy to eval­u­ate the true strength of Ere­di­visie stars. I don’t think Pan­dev is really in the mix at all. Now, if they could some­how keep Ribery, they might really have a chance. But that’s highly unlikely. And Van Gaal is the first real big ego-manager at Bay­ern. That poses just as many risks as oppor­tu­ni­ties. I think this could go either way. Remem­ber what hap­pened when they put together the “White Bal­let” in 2002/03 with Bal­lack, Ze Roberto, etc? Out in the groups stages. 

Will they end up with Adler, Neuer or other?

The word on the street is that Adler’s back isn’t quite up to it.  Neuer might yet hap­pen. Schalke need money to pacify Magath. 

Aside from Ribery and Diego, which player seems most des­tined for foriegn shores this summer?

Dzeko to Milan is more than a rumour. Bar­netta wants out and might be able to find a middle-class EPL team. Pet­ric is keen to make more money, pos­si­bly in Spain.

Tagged as: Christophe Daum, Diego, Edin Dzeko, Felix Magath, Franck Ribery, Mauel Neuer, Misimovic, Piotr Trochowski, Rafael Honigstein, Rene Adler