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).

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.

Now that the Germany’s football fairytale this summer is nothing more than a vague memory, that the vuvuzelas have, thank the Lord, been discarded, and that people who tack mini-flags to their cars once every four years have put them away, we can return to less exciting but more regular fare: the daily soap that is the Bundesliga.

Things get going for the 48th time on Friday 20th August with Bayern München coming up against VfL Wolfsburg. The Bavarians are everyone’s favourites to take the championship again, whilst newly promoted St. Pauli in Hamburg is where the smart money is for relegation. The rest of the league will fit in somewhere in between.

As seen at the MTN Fan Zone in Montecasino, Johannesburg. Photo (cc) flickr user Axel Bührmann

The world’s most spectacular football bonanza; the World Cup, has finally come to an end. Looking back at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, it will be remembered by many with nostalgia.

Both on and off the pitch, the tournament was never short of drama.  There were lots of surprises on the pitch. Spain, the reigning champions, lost their first match to Suisse. England and Argentina were crashed out by Germany in convincing victories as Holland cut Brazil`s dream for their sixth win of the coveted trophy. The Black Stars of Ghana wrote their own history by reaching the quarter finals. All the other African teams crashed out in the first round.

It turned out that Paul the Octopus was right. Photo (cc) flickr user craig Quimby

So the Deutschland dream is over. Buried in a wave of tiki-taka. Yeah, Spain was much superior to Germany and totally deserved their win, but how boring is it to watch them play? Pass, pass, pass. Then pass, pass, pass again. And again, for 73 minutes until they broke German hearts with a goal ‘made in Barcelona.’

It got ugly here in Berlin once the final whistle blew. Schland der Tränen. Everyone annoyed and crestfallen. Frustration at not getting hold of the ball, being unable to do anything worthwhile with it when they did, and the dawning of reality; things too good to be true usually are.