Hooray for FC Hollywood

By: Luke | November 10th, 2009

First of all, apologies to all of you for a slow response to this most interesting of weekends. Although I don’t blame the match, I’ve been pretty sick for three days, but trying to make a comeback today.

Clearly, I don’t want to write a match review. I’d simply make two points about the match itself. It was a relative slight improvement at least over the Bordeaux match, and also you could pretty much see the Hoffenheim or Bremen match as pretty reasonable facsimiles of the performance.
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All the frenzy and attention has mostly been given to Philipp Lahm (see Jan’s superb initial summary here), but I want to start out by talking about Luca Toni. It’s quite surprising to me that most commentators are willing to gloss over this quitter’s command performance. In fact, I am even inclined to say that in American sports, Toni’s actions would be seen as more detrimental to the team than Lahm’s. Once again, the Schalke match was the catalyst for a superstar quitting on the team. Last season against Schalke, when Ribery earned a red card, I was sure his career at Bayern was over. I was convinced the board would stick with Klinsmann, simply because they had invested so much in him, and it was clear that Ribery gave up on the team on that occasion. Stranger things have happened but Luca Toni gave up on this team on Saturday, and no matter who is sitting on the bench in January, Toni needs to be handed his walking papers during the break. Even if Bayern are required to subsidize his entire salary, it would be better for him to watch his World Cup dreams die in his homeland than have him moping around the Sabener Strasse another 7 months. It might have been a lot different with Toni. As comedic in his pratfalls as thrilling in his goal scoring prowess (once), he might have carved out a unique, enduring image in an already large pantheon of Bayern characters. But it seems to all have come to an end with a whimper, and years from now we’re likely to remember Toni sort of like this:

“Remember Luca Toni, that one year?”
“Yeah”
“What happened to him?”
“Well, he kinda got old, I guess, just fizzled out”

At least Toni is lucky enough that we probably won’t remember he just packed up his bags in the middle of a match.
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Philipp Lahm is right. But Philipp Lahm is wrong.
The small man with the now-big voice is drawing praise from all quarters for his intellectual challenge to the Bayern board on a host of fronts. But I think there are two points being overlooked here. First, Lahm’s critique doesn’t immediately validate every piece of criticism that comes from every know-it-all writer or fan. Second, the board is absolutely correct in deeming Lahm’s actions an “absolute taboo” and substantially fining him. You have to question what Lahm was hoping to accomplish by taking his admittedly nuanced and generally accurate views to the court of public opinion. Did he just wish to fan the flames a bit more so that an inferno takes hold at the annual meeting in a couple weeks? Does he think his opinion matters enough to alter the viewpoints of a very stubborn though very successful leadership? Was he simply tired, as a native Munchener, of being confronted by the man on the street with “Hey, what the hell is up with the team, Philipp?” and in a moment of frustration decided to let his mouth run? On Monday, Lahm met with the board, and the club issued a classically understated “everyone has kissed and made up” statement. But this one’s going to reverberate for a while. For me, it brought up a few opinions:

1) It’s easy to forget how injured this team has been. When Louis van Gaal is criticized for his constant lineup changes, it is rarely realized how many of these he has been forced into. With the exception of Gomez, all of the strikers have been injured (I also happen to believe Klose was injured much more severely early on than has been made known publicly). You’ve had serious injuries with Robben, Ribery and Van Bommel. Demichelis and Braafheid, while probably less critical, are also injuries that have weakened depth. The team has probably been lucky to dodge a couple bullets with Daniel van Buyten’s injuries occurring at just the right time. Bottom line: If we’d have played the entire season with the lineup available against Wolfsburg or Dortmund, even at a median level of form, we’re probably neck and neck with Leverkusen.

2) It is only natural that there is a sense of a “team philosophy” vacuum in the current moment. The leadership is somewhat in transition, with Nerlinger still finding his role within the club. The club simply can’t recover from hiring Klinsmann and gearing its policies towards his nebulous philosophy quickly enough to give LVG all the raw material he needs immediately. The timeline of decisions and purchase agreements supports this. I believe the only real unmitigated transfer disaster thus far has been Pranjic, although I do believe Pranjic was brought in more a) as a hedge just in case Ribery was sold and b) to serve in more of a Brazzo/jack-of-all-trades role. It seems commentators harp on the Gomez transfer. Why buy him when you have Toni? Well of course, Gomez was bought to replace Toni. That the club might enjoy a season of having extraordinary depth at the position doesn’t seem ridiculous to me.

3)It is all good and fine to criticize the management for not appreciating the precept that a team is not just a sum of its parts, and also for not addressing critical needs. We sat here all summer in awe that they didn’t acquire a keeper and a right back. But what was missing from Lahm’s comments, and what is of vital importance is that at some level these players need to take responsibility. Because despite whatever mismatched parts may have to link up on the pitch in any given week, this team is still far too talented and creative to turn in this string of results. I would like to have heard a lot more about what Philipp Lahm can do better than what everyone else can do.

Much of what I’ve argued above is the reason why I will continue to stand behind Louis van Gaal. Of course, I won’t shed a tear if we’re 10 points back at the break and the board decides to can him as well. But, the problem is on the field, not on the bench. And I’m afraid Lahm’s criticisms, while quite valid, are endemic to this moment in time at the club, as a result of the coaching changes. It’s just too simple to say “Hey, Hoeness and Rummenigge don’t know what they are doing”. If that were the case, no one would have selected Bayern as their preseason favorite, but virtually everyone did. But what Lahm might have been trying to say in his way, and what I might be trying to say in mine, is that there have been mistakes made, mistakes of a sort that have to run their course and aren’t fixable immediately.