European Soccer News - Germany
Saturday marks the first encounter with Bundesliga competition in the new season as FC Bayern Munich take on 1. FC Köln at Veltins Arena in Gelsenkirchen in the semi-final of the LIGA total! Cup. The match will kick off at 12:35 p.m. Eastern in the US, but there will be no broadcast or satellite coverage of the match in North America. The matches will show live on Sat.1 in Germany, so you’re likely to have a stre...
am option if you go to the pages of some of the usual suspects.
Tournament Summary
Participants: FC Bayern Munich, 1. FC Köln, Hamburger SV, Schalke 04
Format: Matches will be 60 minutes long, with 30 minute halves. A tie match will go directly to penalties.
Schedule: Semi-finals to be played Saturday, 3rd place match and Championship match on Sunday. 10:45 a.m./12:35 p.m. Eastern both days.
Bayern Offside will be unable to provide live coverage for the Saturday match. However, win or lose on Saturday, there will be a live blog up for the Sunday match. Hopefully, we’ll be adding another trophy to the case. Last season, when the competition was called the T-Home Cup, Bayern slipped up in the opening match, dropping a 1-0 decision to eventual tournament champ Hamburger SV. Bayern was able to knock off Schalke in the consolation match for 3rd place.
Kölner False Starts
It’s not been the prettiest of beginnings for Köln, who in my view, will have a fight on their hands to stay in the league this season. They lost a friendly against Anderlecht, then a friendly at their Austrian training camp against the Saudi champs turned ugly and fan stupidity followed. In their most recent test, they fell again, to RC Lens 2-1, with another fracas resulting in a red card for Canadian Kevin McKenna.
Köln have just added Brazilian right back Andrézinho, who will now be the presumed starter at that position, though I don’t think we’ll see him this weekend. With regular forward pairing Podolski and Novakovich still wrapping up their World Cup breaks, one player to watch for is Alexandru Ionita. The former Dynamo Bucharest player had 10 goals in the Romanian league a season ago, and represents Köln’s biggest buy of the summer.
Roster Still Thin for Reds
Louis van Gaal probably won’t have to insert a fitness trainer into the match, but he’s still going to have a selection headache for this tournament. Once again, he’ll be forced to use a few amateur players, despite the fact that the amateurs will also have a match on Saturday. A pro roster for the weekend was not available as of post time, but Francy Ribery will definitely not take part. Bayern will apparently be without Hamit Altintop, who did not train with the main group on Wednesday, and Daniel van Buyten (girlfriend about to give birth). We should see David Alaba rejoin the pros on Sunday following the amateur match on Saturday. Despite only a few days of training, I expect Demichelis to see at least some action on Saturday or Sunday, as Bayern literally don’t have any other CB’s around if Van Buyten is missing. It’s hard to appraise the state of the team after the first friendly, but there don’t seem to be any major defects. Thomas Kraft had an excellent sequence in goal last weekend when his defenders let him down, and seems ready for the challenge ahead.
Prediction: FC Bayern Munich 2:0 1. FC Köln
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