Have you ever had that kind of passive-agressive criticism packaged as praise? You know, kind of like: “So, what did you think of my game, coach?” “Well, all the goals we conceded are your fault: but apart from that, you were great!”

This kind of praising criticism is exactly the right tone for the first day of play in this new Bundesliga season. There were a lot of people looking forward to it: players, coaches, fans, all of them raring to go. Well, everywhere except at Schalke, where they were all at each other’s throats before the first whistle had been blown.

Why such a bad atmosphere so quickly? Because the spokesperson for the Supporters’ Clubs had been sacked. After 22 years. By telephone. All down to coach Magath, who becomes the target of the angry Schalke fan clubs. Things aren’t any better at the team’s first game in Hamburg, with ex-Real-Madrid star Raul’s debut turning out to be a real disaster. Somehow, it looks as if Schalke have signed the wrong Madrileno: Raul looks lost, out of breath. Meanwhile, Hamburg do well, with Ruud van Nistelrooy scoring two goals to take them to a 2:1 victory.

“Hey, thanks to you guys at the German Football League! Doin’ a great job!” That’s the kind of ironic train of thought that was probably running through the heads of coaches and players in Cologne and Freiburg, with the first match day showing that the new additions to the league aren’t to be taken lightly. Newly-promoted Kaiserslauten were away at Cologne, and Cologne’s mid-fielder Mohamad managed to make football history by bagging himself a red card after just 87 seconds. It’s never been done faster than that! Nevertheless, Cologne went ahead, but chucked away a 1:0 lead in the last twenty minutes to finish at 1:3, with Lukas Podolski continuing in the same vein as last season: a vein of exceptionally poor performance. He looked as if he was just trying to keep himself busy between the really important national games.

Things looked pretty similar in Freiburg, with newly-promoted teams from the first division showing their quality. Here, it was St. Pauli, the supposed anti-capitalist alternatives from Hamburg, who turned a 0:1 defeat into a 3:1 win. There followed a lot of talk by football analysts about the “St. Pauli phenomenon”. Well, if you ask me, the phenomenon is exactly the same as at all other football clubs: cash. This club is a dominated by the rules of capitalism as any other, however much they always try to present themselves as the friendly underdogs.
Meanwhile, there was frustration in Bavaria, with Wolfsburg’s players doing their best to get a draw against the far bigger Bayern Munich. After three quarters of an hour, they finally manage to get into the game, their trainers McLaren is seen doing acrobatics up and down the line, and nevertheless Bayern’s Ribéry gets the ball into the box just in time for Schweinsteiger to come storming in and smack it into the back of the net. Bloody bad luck!

“Bloody Özil” is what they’ll be thinking in Bremen. Not that they’d have needed him in Hoffenheim! After all, one Özil wouldn’t have been able to do much to counteract the four goals by which Bremen lost, so it’s not really much of a problem that they sold him to Madrid for 18 million. Nevertheless, the sports press seem to think that it was all down to his departure and just couldn’t stop asking everyone and anyone – the coach, the goalie, the bus driver – if they thought that that was the reason they lost. I’ve got another explanation, though: maybe the opponents just happened to be quite good?

What, though, could possibly explain Dortmund’s home 0:2 loss to Bayer Leverkusen? Perhaps it was Bayer’s blue tops that blinded the Westphalians, with Michael Ballack looking like he was still at Chelsea in that royal blue top. Whatever the case, the referee was certainly so confused by the blue that he refused Dortmund a perfectly good goal that would have put them at 1:1; Ballack’s minions then had the advantage and pressed it home to gain victory.

So, overall: Schalke, Cologne, Freiburg, Wolfsburg, Bremen and Dortmund all had bad luck. Apart from that, though, it was great!

Any by the way: since there are so many German stars abroad, here’s a quick anecdote for you. With German players still not getting into the swing of things – Özil and Khedira at Madrid are still waiting for the Spanish season to begin – it’s a shame that Jerome Boateng couldn’t get started in the English league. The reason? A stewardess hit his knee with her drinks trolly on the flight over and now he’s laid up with a torn tendon. Who’d have thought it?

(by Stefan Reichart and Brian Melican)

Results Matchday 1:
Bayern München – VfL Wolfsburg 2:1
1899 Hoffenheim – Werder Bremen 4:1
Borussia Mönchengladbach – 1. FC Nürnberg 1:1
1. FC Köln – 1. FC Kaiserslautern 1:3
SC Freiburg – FC St. Pauli 1:3
Hannover 96 – Eintracht Frankfurt 2:1
Hamburger SV – FC Schalke 04 2:1
1. FSV Mainz 05 – VfB Stuttgart 2:0
Borussia Dortmund – Bayer Leverkusen 0:2