Artur Wichniarek

I tend to get too excited about the young kids, when they move. I will often over-value the trans­fers of the the Zuculini, Sven Ben­der and Lewis Holtby’s of the foot­balling world. I will see Ralf Fahrmann’s move to Ein­tra­cht as the bar­gain of the cen­tury. But youth takes time to develop, so this year […]

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Goal­keeper Jaroslav Drobny (Hertha Berlin) Make no mis­take about it, Berlin’s rise from bot­tom half side to title con­tenders was based on defense. They were a hard side to break down and on the off-chance that a team did, there was Drobny to get by. His per­for­mance against Bay­ern was the stuff of leg­ends. Defenders […]

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Cologne dom­i­nated much of the game at home against Arminia Biele­feld, but in the end, couldn’t break down the central-half pair­ing of Herzig and Andre Mija­tovic with Den­nis Eil­hoff in goal. With over 60% of pos­ses­sion and 16 shots on goal by Cologne, it was down to the orga­ni­za­tion of the two cen­tral defend­ers to […]

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Arminia Biele­feld gained a point and a lit­tle breath­ing room in their fight to stay up this year. Things didn’t start brightly when their defend­ers fell asleep and allowed Andriy Voronin to ghost onto a ball deliv­ered by keeper Jaroslav Drobny and slot home a 13′ lead. They lev­eled in the 40′ when right back […]

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KSC went to Schüco Arena and came away with their first vic­tory in four road matches and ended an eight game win­less streak against Arminia. Arminia were their own worst enemy as they played a ter­ri­ble first 75 min­utes of foot­ball. They looked tech­ni­cally defi­cient com­pared with their south­ern foes. They gave away pos­ses­sion too […]

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Here’s this week’s Bun­desliga XI. It is packed with Bayer 04, Hof­fen­heim and Werder play­ers. It does include a spe­cial shoutout to the man who ended Energie’s goal drought, an under appre­ci­ated defender from Arminia and a goal­keeper who lost. 1. Schalke 04 Now 10 of their last 13 have been scored by defend­ers. This time […]

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XI">The Bundesliga XI

by Double Pivot on September 10, 2008 · 0 comments

While this is expected to become a weekly col­umn, I have decided to hand out the first Weekly XI based on the cumu­la­tive efforts of the first three weeks.  I will use a 3–4–3 for­ma­tion for my picks. Schober (S04) West­er­mann (S04) Sub­otic (BVB) Friedrich (HBS) Kuba (BVB) Marin (MON) Schwe­in­steiger (FCB) Deje­gah (WLF) Wich­niarek (AB) Helmes (BL) Ibi­se­vic (TSG) GK: Mathias […]

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