The Bundesliga’s Most Booked

Foot­ball is not always a beau­ti­ful game; some­times book­ings are nec­es­sary. Thank­fully, we’re on hand to keep all these book­ings straight. There are 34 dis­tinct offences that the DFB con­sid­ers book­able. In their honor I’ve writ­ten this paean to the punished:

We are here not to cas­ti­gate but to cel­e­brate these mas­ters of mis­con­duct, bal­leri­nas of book­ings, pashas of poorly-timed tackles,

[ed. note: This con­tin­ues on for quite awhile with plenty of mixed metaphors and the odd off-color Madonna ref­er­ence. In the inter­est of time, we resume now at the end]

great gurus of gra­tu­itous violence.

Whew. Yes, it’s the return of the cov­eted Ste­fan “111 Yel­low Cards in only 370 Bun­desliga Games” Effen­berg Memo­r­ial Tro­phy!



Last year, as you might recall, the sea­son ended with a clear vic­tory by MSV Duisburg’s Mihai Tararache. Unfor­tu­nately he’s not on hand to defend his tro­phy, although he’s cer­tainly com­pet­ing for the 2. Bundesliga’s less pres­ti­gious Willi Land­graf Cup. His two fiercest rivals from last year (Mark van Bom­mel and Grafite) are, how­ever, still around and off to an excel­lent start in this season’s cam­paign. One impor­tant note before look­ing at the table: the scor­ing sys­tem from last year has been changed to increas­ingly reward bad behav­ior: 1 pt for a yel­low, 3 pts for the sec­ond yel­low of a game, and 5 pts for a straight red to go along with the extended vaca­tion away from the pitch.

3. Manuel Friedrich/Christian Fuchs, Leverkusen/Bochum, 4pts.
While these two have done enough to sep­a­rate them­selves from the throng of 3 yel­low carders behind them, they haven’t done enough oth­er­wise. There’s not enough to go on this early in the sea­son to allow me to really choose one over the other. Both had a sin­gle yel­low before earn­ing an early shower with two more yel­lows in a sec­ond game. At the moment they’re just place­hold­ers on the podium, at least until things clear up. The two play­ers ahead of them, how­ever, have rightly earned their positions.

2. Mark van Bom­mel, Bay­ern, 4 pts.
van Bom­mel gets the nod for sec­ond place ahead of Manuel Friedrich and Chris­t­ian Fuchs for two rea­sons. First, his two yel­lows against Dort­mund came in the span of 4 min­utes. You have to admire such the ded­i­ca­tion to his craft. He evinces it when­ever he steps onto the field and right up until he’s sent off again. Sec­ond, if van Bom­mel didn’t play in the Bun­desliga I don’t know if I’d have the heart to write up this par­tic­u­lar col­umn. He always man­ages to find a new way to both get a smile on my face and his name in the book. I have no doubt that he’ll be near the top of the table at the end of this season.

1. Fabian Ernst, Schalke, 6 pts.
It could be no one else but Schalke’s mid­fielder, really. He opened his account with a yel­low against his for­mer club, Werder Bre­men. But his crown­ing 3-game-suspension-worthy moment came last week in the Revierderby against Dort­mund. His sloppy (some might call it reck­less and dan­ger­ous) tackle against Kuba, only min­utes after team­mate Chris­t­ian Pan­der was sent off with his sec­ond of the night, really allowed Dort­mund to gain a well-deserved point. The chal­lenge for Ernst, beyond how to spend his free time in the upcom­ing weeks, is how to keep him­self on top of this table. Straight reds might be flashy and gar­ner you lots of style points, but they also keep you out of com­mis­sion for too long to be competitive.

Don’t be sur­prised to see the next edi­tion of The Bundesliga’s Most Booked headed by some­one who’s qui­etly been col­lect­ing a yel­low every game or so. Con­sis­tent indis­ci­pline is the ulti­mate key to success.

Tagged as: Borussia Dortmund, Bremen, Christian Fuchs, Christian Pander, DFB, Fabian Ernst, FC Bayern München, FC Schalke 04, Grafite, Kuba, Leverkusen, Manuel Friedrich, Mark Van Bommel, Mihai Tararache, MSV Duisburg, Revierderby, Stefan Effenberg, VfL Bochum, Willi Landgraf