I want to start the post the same way I did last year, with a picture of some more mini-men. Though these are a different kind, compared to the Jogi and Klinsi ones I got last year they really are mini. That is in size, they aren’t actually called mini-men like the others. The other difference is that they’re of Manuel Neuer and Jogi. I’m not sure the Jogi one is a good likeness but Neuer’s isn’t bad.Though the height of them is all wrong, Neuer is way taller than Jogi and pretty much everyone else (except for Mertesacker of course). For fun I added a picture of last year’s mini men too:
I also got another Manuel Neuer collectible recently, his shiny sticker from the new Champions League album. To make it even more perfect in the stickers I bought on Thursday I got the shiny sticker of none other than Robert Lewandowski. I kept them to open just before the game started, for good luck. He really does have excellent timing:
The first day of the second half of the season went much better than the first, not so much for Bayern but for me. I learnt my lesson from that day to always have a back-up plan and this time around I got the video of Jogi’s half-time interview plus a short video of him with Pep Guardiola. At least I know that if I don’t get much sleep tonight that won’t be the cause, I won’t spend half the night trying and failing to get that video like I did back on MD1. I can have no complaints about how today went, not everything went perfect but that’s not so important for once. What matters is the things that were most important went right, and as a bonus I got a new Hansi video too.
The game may not have been much fun and Bayern certainly aren’t at their best yet but at least Jogi was right this time around in his prediction as to who would win. Last year he predicted Wolfsburg and Bayern would draw 2-2, in reality Wolfsburg won 4-1. This time he was right but only just, he said Bayern would hold on to their lead if they didn’t lose concentration. They managed to pull one back after Xabi Alonso’s own goal not long after the first of the second half and that’s how the score stayed, 2-1 thanks to Lewandowski’s second goal. He scored their first as well which was a penalty, given after Adler brought down Müller in the box in the 36th minute. So it’s Robert Lewandowski who gets the honour of scoring the first goal of the Rückrunde. The second goal I particularly like because the first move was a long and(as usual) exceedingly accurate pass from Manuel Neuer to Thiago. Neuer was where he’s often to be found, up near the half-way line. The goal itself was excellent, as was the final pass from Müller, in both cases showcasing their quick thinking. But it’s Neuer’s part in it that I like. Firstly because I always enjoy watching his terrific ability to pick out a pass and secondly because the last time Bayern played HSV in Hamburg he was involved in another incident in the same place. He got a yellow card for a tackle made just before the half-way line. It’s good that this time I’m writing about something positive and not another incident like that.
One final picture I have to add to this post to make it just like last time is a screenshot from YouTube. Last year I was obsessed with one of my Jogi videos beating a Kretschmann one in my stats. Now of course TK has been outnumbered by Jogi several times over. But both of them have been overtaken by the man of the hour Robert Lewandowski, that’s thanks to his two post-match interviews after the Wolfsburg game in the first half of the season. With those two videos alone he racked up precisely 232,846 views. So it’s fitting that he’s at the top of this week stats:
On the subject of videos I made and uploaded a special one to celebrate the return of the Bundesliga, one which contains some of my favourite Jogi & Hansi moments:
As expected I got close to nothing done today but I did come up with a few interesting ideas and make some notes. The most important of these being a new alternate time-line. I currently have two Jogi & Hansi time-lines for their adventures, one starting in 2014 and one starting in 2008. I now have another one which starts in 1996 thanks to a very random conversation which I had earlier. Originally I hadn’t planned on talking to anyone at all today but they drew me in talking about some thoughts they had on a story. So intriguing was the following idea I had to make a note of it right there and then, before I even had breakfast. You know an idea’s a good one when it’s more important than getting something to eat. I just wish I could remember the conversation which led to it. I have all of the idea down on paper, all of my thoughts. But I’d really like to know what they said which led to me coming up with this idea. It’ll have to wait, they’re not going to be pleased if I wake them up at 6:00am to ask them about it. Waiting patiently is certainly not going to be easy, it’s hard enough to switch off as it is without that on my mind. I am way too excited right now, mostly because of the prospect of the Gladbach game and also because I can’t wait to get started on my new idea. But I have to get some sleep, at least four hours. I promised myself at the end of the summer that I wouldn’t let what happened on the first day of the season happen again.
