Club football weird and getting weirder

Opinion

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This article was published 07/10/2022 (1067 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It bears repeating: because of this autumn’s World Cup, the European club football season is going to produce more frequent injuries, more bizarre results and more unusual tables than a typical campaign.

The Bundesliga is Exhibit A.

Yes, that’s Union Berlin — the first former East Berlin club in the division — perched atop the standings. Oh, and Freiburg are just below them on goal difference.

Bayer Leverkusen, having placed third only five months ago, are second from bottom. On Wednesday they sacked manager Gerardo Seoane and appointed one-time Bayern Munich midfielder Xabi Alonso, who also starred for Liverpool and Real Madrid and won the 2010 World Cup with Spain.

Seoane was the third Bundesliga boss to get the boot this term — a remarkable number for a tournament in which only five managers were relieved of their duties in all of last season.

Unusual, indeed. Frantic, even.

And speaking of frantic, today the presumed title contenders will play an unexpected 4 vs. 3 match when Borussia Dortmund welcome Bayern Munich to the Westfalenstadion for Der Klassiker (11:30 a.m., Sportsnet World).

Record champions Bayern, having jumped from fifth to third in the table with last weekend’s 4-0 drubbing of Leverkusen (placing the nail on Seoane’s coffin that Porto hammered in), opened their October schedule with Tuesday’s 5-0 stroll over Viktoria Plzen in the Champions League.

“Crisis Over!” heralded Suddeutsche Zeitung, referencing a four-match winless run that culminated in an embarrassing 1-0 defeat at Augsburg before the international break.

When you’ve won 10 straight shields, a monthlong skid is, indeed, a crisis. And while it may be “over,” which is arguable, given Bayern’s victories came courtesy of a relegation-threatened outfit and a Czech side (no disrespect intended to Plzen), all it would take is a Klassiker defeat for it to be back on.

In that scenario, Bayern’s recent Bundesliga record would read “one win from six,” and they could find themselves as low as seventh by Sunday.

Even a triumph over their derby rivals wouldn’t much relieve the pressure on manager Julian Nagelsmann, who is under a lot of it. His players are reportedly frustrated with his tactics, and he’s spent the past few days tinkering — hardly ideal ahead of such a consequential match.

Die Roten will also be without longtime forward Thomas Muller, who tested positive for COVID-19 last week and is still experiencing symptoms. The pandemic, it’s somehow easy to forget, is also playing its part in shaping this wholly unpredictable season.

Borussia Dortmund, meanwhile, have even more squad concerns than Bayern.

In his Friday press conference, manager Edin Terzic confirmed that captain Marco Reus will once again miss out with an ankle injury, meaning 19-year-old midfielder Jude Bellingham will likely retain the armband he wore against Koln and Sevilla.

The Koln contest, in which Dortmund’s lead was wiped out by three second-half goals from their hosts, prompted Terzic to drop striker Anthony Modeste and winger Donyell Malen, who has returned just a single goal in the DFB-Pokal this term. Youssoufa Moukoko, who replaced Modeste in Spain, is expected to keep his place for the Bayern showdown, and a lack of options could see Malen restored to the XI.

Terzic could, however, deploy the veteran Emre Can in midfield, move Bellingham further forward and start Karim Adeyemi ahead of the Dutchman. That said, he’d no doubt prefer his lineup to be rather more settled going into the Klassiker.

As if to underline the desperation of the encounter, one of the stranger narratives ahead of kick-off concerns referee Deniz Aytekin.

Now, Germany not being Italy, the sports dailies don’t typically dedicate pages of space to the match officials. There is, however, German football rule preventing a referee from overseeing games in which one of the teams is from his home province — that is, there was such a rule. The DfB relaxed it during the height of the pandemic and has yet to bring it back into full force.

Aytekin is from Bavaria and lives in Furth. Might that make him partial to Bayern? Maybe even hostile to them?

Of course not.

But this is not a normal Klassiker; it is not a normal season. The squads are mangled, the results baffling. And when even the Bundesliga is making a protagonist out of a referee, you know it’s only going to get weirder.

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