Jürgen Klopp

I missed the first round of games on fam­ily vaca­tion. While I still have the Gladbach-Bochum game on DVR to watch for fun, my first game of the sea­son, albeit delayed, was Dortmund’s 1–0 vic­tory at home over Köln. It was a thor­oughly deserved vic­tory where Dort­mund put the Billy Goats to the sword and […]

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Have goals ever been so impor­tant? With two games remain­ing, points are only mar­gin­ally more impor­tant than goal dif­fer­ence in the hunt for sur­vival, Europe and even the Meis­ter­schaft. Wolfs­burg silenced the crit­ics and showed their pro­fes­sion­al­ism by keep­ing their out­stand­ing home-form (remem­ber the only points dropped at the VW were back in August) by […]

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Why Pick Lee?

by Double Pivot on August 27, 2008 · 0 comments

Young-Pyo Lee has joined Dort­mund after the club agreed to terms with Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur for the South Korean full­back. Lee’s sur­vival at Spurs this long has been some­thing of a odd­ity for us Lily­whites as he had fallen behind Gareth Bale, Benoit Assou-Ekotto, Jamie O’Hara and Gilberto in Juande Ramos’ esti­ma­tion. He had been a […]

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I have just returned from my sum­mer hol­i­days, where I had a lovely respite from footie. How­ever, here we are with the sea­son two weeks deep and I am behind. But I am afforded the lux­ury of mak­ing my tac­ti­cal analy­sis on two games rather than one, which can be use­ful. I decided to spend […]

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1st Schalke What You Know: If baseball’s Chicago Cubs had a baby with the Red Sox prior to 2004, Schalke would be the off­spring. What You Don’t: All things both good and bad must end. What to Expect: Yes, Campe­ones! I say that, buck­ing all trends, and know­ing full well that Schalke could be lead­ing the […]

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The Deutsche Presse Agen­tur released a poll yes­ter­day about pre­dic­tions for the upcom­ing sea­son. Bay­ern Munich was the unan­i­mous favorite of Bun­desliga coaches to repeat as cham­pi­ons. The most com­mon rea­son given was the qual­ity of Jür­gen Klinsmann’s squad. What fol­lows is a hasty trans­la­tion of what each of the 18 gaffers had to say […]

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This week we make the short trip west on the A40 from Dort­mund past Bochum to Gelsenkirchen, home to Schalke 04 and their new coach, Fred Rut­ten. Much like his new Ruhr rival, Jür­gen Klopp, Rut­ten has been a one club man for almost his entire 30-year play­ing and coach­ing career, all with FC Twente […]

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