VFB Redemption

[el americano]

It hasn't been a good year for VFB Stuttgart. Losing Mario Gomez in the off season seemed to take to heart out of the team. It certainly left them with no one to score goals, while he is among the league leaders with Bayern (sigh, another player lost to Bayern). Things went wrong from day 1. Being bottom of the table after one match is a bad sign. Level with relegation after sixteen, with just two wins, is cause for alarm. [The alarm must have started after week 15, 'cause they sacked Markus Babbel.] You can expect to be fighting relegation 'til the end of the season after that, but sometimes you really can turn things around midway through the season.

It took the new manager, Christian Gross, a week to get settled before pulling his new team together for a five match win streak, more than doubling their point total from 13 to 28 points. It's the kind of streak that can keep you out of trouble if that's all you do for the whole year. It ended, fittingly, with them exactly at mid-table and a zero goal differential. They can't be expecting to challenge for a Europa League spot, but they've found something that works, and they can fearlessly experiment and give all of their players a chance to prove themselves. Sometimes you have to be happy with not being abysmal, because sometimes you don't even have that much.

[el americano]

Maybe there's a scorer after all. After scoring only 2 in his first 900 minutes of play, Cacau scored 4 against Köln. Then he scored one against Barcelona later in the week for good measure. When you're hot, you're hot.

[el americano]

It's a little late, but it must be said that VfB continues to be hot and are now up to 7th place, thanks to this week's victory over Mönchengladbach and last week's defeat of Bayern München! Yes, the South Germany battle goes to us!

The Europa League is still four points away with five matches to play, but if they can edge a little closer they'll have something to play for until the end, which is more than they had at the bottom of the table half way through the season. If Christian Gross gets them 5th place, he's a genius. Most of these guys are anonymous.

Either way, I have no idea what next year will bring, since Cacau has said he won't be re-signing with us, and Jens Lehmann has announced his retirement. I'm looking forward to the unknown.

[el americano]

And the final match of the season is done. As I expected 5th place was too much to hope for. They continued the form that made them the best team of the second half, but the league leaders won too, and our advance was stalled. Finally, Hamburg faltered and we took 6th place. Somewhere along the way, I realized that both Pokal finalists had already qualified for Europe, so the 6th place would earn a Europa League qualification. We're in Europe again!!

There were a couple of draws at the end, but it was enough to hold on. Terrific effort by the team, and a miraculous turnaround by Christian Gross. We gained some insight into how he runs the squad when Alexander Hleb started complaining about being substituted repeatedly. His response was, "He is an attacking midfielder and has one goal and one assist to his name. This is relatively little. I am going to play him a full match if I am fully happy with his work-rate, his willingness to help the team in defensive situations and if he creates no unforced balls then he will play 90 minutes for sure." Hleb will not be extending his loan next year

There is a lot to hope for next year. What might they accomplish with a fast start. Bayern's meisterschaft winning 70 points does not seem so far off.