Underground Berlin

Down, down, down, into the Berliner Unterwelt! Photo (cc) flickr user escpeapalumni
The meeting place was normal enough; if I hadn’t known what was going on beneath us and where we would spend the next hour and a half, I never would have guessed at what was just below the ground on which I stood. Berlin’s Gesundbrunnen metro stop, both inside and outside, lacked the kind of dank, enthralling mystery that was waiting several stories beneath us in the Berliner Unterwelten.
Come on, quick! Now’s the time to get rid of players you don’t need and then go and get some new ones! Why? Because after the qualifying games for the Champions League and the European Cup, it’s clear that all the German teams involved have made it into the group phase of the continental competitions. There’s new money available, the first games are out of the way and decisions about location have been made: so now it’s a game of musical chairs, with Bremen hoping Silvestre will set down on their seat, Hannover wanting to tempt Hajnal from Dortmund, Wolfsburg grabbing Diego and Demichelis looking to sit down anywhere except at Munich – he doesn’t get along well with the trainer. Really, any team with ambitions to take the Champions’ League should be looking to sign him: after all, ex-Bayern defenders are as close as you can get to guaranteed title success (see Lucio at Inter Milan last season).






