I certainly didn’t expect to be making any GIFs from this particular video, it’s not the kind of thing you’d expect to find any funny moments in and yet Hansi has provided two, one with just him and the second with him and Jogi. I would love to know what they’re saying, especially the second one. What kind of joke are him and Jogi sharing, what is it that’s so funny? What I wouldn’t give to know.
Posted in Die Mannschaft, Fußball, Germany, Hansi Flick, Jogi Löw, Matthias Ginter
Tagged Bastian Schweinsteiger, Hans-Dieter Flick, Joachim "Jogi" Löw, Lukas Podolski, Manuel Neuer, Mario Götze, Mathias Ginter, Miroslav Klose, Per Mertesacker, Philipp Lahm, Roman Weidenfeller, Sami Khedira, Shkodran Mustafi, Thomas Müller, Toni Kroos
Video of the goals and the full match. Plus pictures of Roman Weidenfeller:
An interview with Roman from Dortmund’s Asian Tour courtesy of the club’s site, plus pictures:
Usually knowing that something is going to happen makes it a little easier to deal with, having some preparation for it makes the event in question easier when it does occur. Not so here, all the preparation in the world could not have helped here. I knew Roman was going to be leaving, knew that it was just a question of when and where. His likely destination was Dortmund and that is indeed where he has ended up, €4.5 million was what they paid for him. And it’s not a question of one Roman for another either, Weidenfeller is apparently set on seeing out his contract at Dortmund which runs until 2016.
Not that it would have made much difference but I wish I hadn’t found out in the way I did. I found out during Sami Khedira’s charity match on Sunday afternoon, right from the devil himself, that is from new Dortmund coach Thomas Tuchel when he was being interviewed on the touchline and he called Bürki his dream goalkeeper.
Like I said, it wouldn’t have made much difference how I found out but it did matter when. Firstly, I would have liked to have had the rest of the weekend to enjoy and secondly I would have preferred to have found out when I didn’t have to spend the next hour or so in the virtual presence of the other Roman and the coach who just helped himself to my favourite player.
I originally meant to write about this on Sunday night, when the game had finished but after recording the game, making the videos and screen-capping it I was too tired to do anything else. I’m glad it turned out that way because a lot of what I wrote then was feeling sorry for myself rambling which didn’t really make a whole lot of sense. Since finding out two days have passed, other things have happened and more importantly I got some sleep. I think that helped the most, catching up on some much needed sleep and having two very lazy sick days like I promised myself I would have.
2. Bundesliga count-down – 37 days to go.
Earlier this morning I got to see his very first Bundesliga game, MD1: Eintracht Frankfurt v SC Freiburg. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to watch it, that it would make me feel miserable all over again. For whatever reason, it didn’t have that effect. Despite that I know not to be lulled into a false sense of security by this seemingly calm acceptance of the situation. A similar thing happened at the end of the season too, a very emotional reaction when it actually happened and then nothing, not upset and not angry, just nothing. Until something reminded me of it, whether it be a certain sticker, a video or some random collectible. Getting new pictures of Hansi earlier certainly cheered me up,and I’m still pretty happy about having not only seen the match on Sunday but having those pictures and the video of Jogi I was able to make. Plus tonight is the beginning of the U21 European Championship so there’s enough to keep me distracted for a little while. Germany play Serbia tonight, Denmark on Saturday and the Czech Republic on the following Tuesday.
On the subject of goalkeepers, Roman is not the only one on the move. Sven Ulreich is leaving VfB Stuttgart for Bayern, he’s set to replace Pepe Reina as their second choice keeper. Kind of a strange choice, it’s not like he’s going to get a lot of playing time when he’s second choice to the best keeper in the world.
It’s not only because of Roman that I’m glad I didn’t get to write this post on Sunday. Not only am I little less emotional at that news but I’m less angry about the other things that were on my mind and that can only be a good thing, I’m no less confused about any of it but it’s a start. Not just that but I’m no longer feeling quite so sorry for myself and complaining about why everything has to go wrong. I guess I’ve gotten some perspective on the whole thing. I still plan to write about some of those things, they are still on my mind but I’m going to do so when I can make a little more sense of them. I don’t want to be writing about such depressing things right now, I just want to enjoy tonight’s game. On a related note, I wondered to myself the other day whether or not I could go a whole week without watching at least one match, I thought I could do it. How wrong I was, it’s Wednesday and by the time the day is over I’ll have seen four matches.
There was a daily prompt the other day asking if you are satisfied with the way you deal with a crisis. I didn’t write anything for it, I was going to but changed my mind. The reason being that usually what I think is a crisis isn’t, it’s my overreaction that makes it seem like a crisis. I get worried over things that most people wouldn’t even give a second thought to and I always think the worst of situations, I really need to stop doing that, to not be so negative all the time. If I’m going to allow myself to talk to other people then I need to accept that sometimes things will go wrong, there will be misunderstandings. There’s always going to be plenty of them when you’re speaking in a language you’re not fluent in. But it’s not the end of the world and you can’t act like it is every time something goes wrong. There are enough real problems to deal with, you don’t need to go looking for anymore trouble and creating problems where there are none.
On the subject of overreacting to things, there’s a most curious subject on my mind right now related to such things and that is the media and online reaction to something Jogi did during Saturday’s game. During the game he tore a nail and he rectified the problem with a nail file and some people seem to think he was being disrespectful by having done so, I don’t know why or how. Because he was doing that instead of watching the match? I don’t know, I really don’t. I really don’t see what the big deal was. As for being disrespectful, he’s been nothing but respectful towards their opponents in the group, Gibraltar in particular who lets face it are a joke as far as football is concerned. They shouldn’t even be allowed to play, but that’s not relevant here. What is relevant is that he’s never laughed them off as opponents, he’s taken them seriously and didn’t talk about them in a dismissive manner when answering questions about them at the press conference. He should get a little credit just for keeping a straight face when he was asked about the strengths and weaknesses of the Gibraltar side.
Posted in Autism, Fußball, SC Freiburg
Tagged Autism/Asperger's Syndrome, Roman Bürki, Roman Weidenfeller
That I did not see coming, apparently Borussia Dortmund are interested in Freiburg keeper Roman Bürki. Hence the title, it seems Dortmund want to swap one Roman for another. They want a reliable Roman and not the calamitous error ridden Roman that Weidenfeller so often was last season. I would obviously be very sad to see Roman leave Freiburg, but you can’t deny they have good taste. He was last season the second best keeper in the league, plus he’s a bargain at around €4.5 million. To make it even easier for them he has an exit clause in his contract. This is all so confusing, I have no idea how to feel about any of this. I know it’s just a rumor and I really shouldn’t be reading transfer gossip but in my defence I didn’t go looking for it, it was in my inbox and that was the title, so it wasn’t really possible to ignore it. I couldn’t delete it without reading it, it would be like deleting Roman and I would never do that. How strange these things are. In my FIFA Ultimate team I demoted Weidenfeller to back-up keeper when I got Bürki or as he’s known “the silver Neuer.” Neuer is impossible to get, at least without paying actual cash anyway and I refuse to do that. For me Bürki’s not second best, nor a poor man’s Neuer, as much as I like Manuel I would still choose Roman any day.
I like Dortmund yet I couldn’t like them if they took Roman, I know he has to go somewhere. Would it be better or worse if he went to a team I didn’t like? If that happened would I then not like him anymore? I suppose I should be grateful if he stays in Germany, then it won’t be too difficult to keep seeing him play. It’s all so unfair, I never even got the chance to have a goalkeeper shirt with his name on the back. I know it’s stupid and I wouldn’t be showing any loyalty to his inevitable replacement but I still want to get a shirt with his name on the back. A Freiburg one, though if he went to Dortmund I would save up for one of those too. I liked Weidenfeller and bought one because of him, why should the same not apply for my very favourite Roman?
And now it really begins, the waiting and the worrying. Just when the day was going so well, making that video of Jogi earlier, writing more for the match-day 34 story and the best thing of all, whilst doing both those things I had Hansi Flick’s training shirt sitting next to me the whole time. I think I’ll wait till tomorrow to post pictures now, I don’t want to be celebrating anything whilst thinking about saying goodbye to Roman. Suddenly having the shirt in my possession no longer makes me so happy. I’ve been fairly distracted the past few days, meaning I’ve been too busy to think over or get upset about being relegated and all that comes with it. Now it’s just like the Saturday it happened, the same feelings, just as intense as that day.
It’s ruined what I had planned to do with the rest of my free time this week, I was going to make videos from all the highlights of Freiburg’s games of Roman, that doesn’t seem like such a good idea right now.
The other rumor I read has made me feel even worse than the Roman one, if such a thing were possible. It concerns my second favourite Freiburger Admir Mehmedi. Apparently HSV are showing some interest in him, that cannot be, he cannot go there. Not just because of what they did either, it’s not the right place for him, he deserves better than that. Leverkusen also allegedly have some interest in him, if he leaves and he most likely will, I don’t really care which team he goes to. None of them will be tolerable, but there are two in particular that would be unbearable, HSV and the other H that played a part in Freiburg being relegated. Speaking of H’s, it’s strange that one of the departures that has been confirmed is that of Jonathan Schmid to local rivals Hoffenhein and that I don’t seem to be very upset about it. It’s not that I don’t like him or anything, I do, he’s just not a favourite of mine so it hurts a lot less.
This is all so depressing, if I’m not going to post pictures of the latest addition to my collection, I should at least mention the other good thing from today. That is that Germany remain in their place at the top of the FIFA World Rankings, they are no.1 with 1,775 points with just over 250 points more than second placed Belgium. World Cup runners up Argentina are third and 2010 winners Spain are tenth.
There is another numbers related thing to be happy about, Jogi once more being at the top of my YouTube list. Not only that but he accounts for four out of the top five:
Six days to go until Germany play the USA who are ranked 27th in the world rankings. One final piece of statistics trivia, well several pieces technically. The day before yesterday I got some views from Madagascar, how awesome is that. And then yesterday some from Lebanon. Today there were some more from Lebanon and this is the part that amused me, some from Uruguay. The reason being that a few days ago I finished making the Jogi videos for the 2010 World Cup and the last one was of course the third place game against Uruguay. Plus I actually watched them play late last night (or early this morning depending on your perspective). I watched an old game of theirs from the 2011 Copa America in which they played Chile, a game I only watched because there was nothing else to watch.
It’s also a great source of amusement to me that someone found this by typing in the words “non stop Hansi” into a search engine. I have no clue what that means, or what they were looking for, or even if it’s the right Hansi, but still it’s funny.
2. Bundesliga count-down – 50 days to go.
Posted in Fußball, SC Freiburg
Tagged Admir Mehmedi, Borussia Dortmund, Germany, Roman Bürki, Roman Weidenfeller, SC Freiburg
The first part of the title refers to a dream I had last weekend, thankfully it was Thomas Tuchel who paid me a visit in my dreams and not the other Thomas. This Thomas is Jürgen Klopp’s successor, like Klopp he’s coached Mainz as well and he will take over at Dortmund at the end of the season when Klopp departs. In the dream I was asking him about his plans for Dortmund, in particular about which players he wanted to keep and who would be the first to leave. He asked if there was anyone in particular I was wondering about. I replied in the affirmative and said that Roman Weidenfeller was who I was wondering about. I wanted to know if Roman had said he wanted to leave and if he wanted him to stay. I don’t remember his answer or if there was anymore to the conversation.
All this time I’ve been thinking about him leaving Dortmund and whether or not I would care about that, without considering the possibility that he’s not the Roman I was worried about. That it’s Roman Bürki I’m really worried about and whether or not he will stay at Freiburg, whether they stay up or not. It’s ironic I’ll say that, back in March I wrote about how change wasn’t always a bad thing because if nothing ever changed then Oliver Baumann would not have left and Freiburg would have not needed to look for a new goalkeeper. Now change or rather the possibility of change is the enemy once more. It’s not something that just applies to football, it’s a lesson that has to be learnt in real life too. A lesson that I seem to need to learn time and time again. Things change, whether you want them to or not. It’s a recurring theme in my dreams, I’ve had dreams related to the topic that had Jogi, Hansi, Klinsi and the other Thomas in them. In fact the presence of Thomas Tuchel is a message in itself. By dreaming about him it’s an acceptance of his presence at Dortmund next season.
Other than worrying about Roman and the possibility of relegation and other players leaving, there’s other things I’m worried about changing too, things big and small. One of them is a change that’s already taken place, something which happened completely without warning and were I to share it with anyone in real life they would without a doubt tell me that I’m overreacting, that it’s not a big deal. To them it’s just a new layout for the TV guide, it would mean nothing to most people but it means something to me. It means something to me to wake up one day and find out that the layout you are so used to has been taken away to be replaced by a new one that you hate, not just because it’s different but because it’s completely impractical. Maybe if it had happened at a less stressful time and if there had been some warning I wouldn’t be so bothered by it. The way things are right now I don’t need any surprises like that.
I think maybe I’ll write a story about that, a Jogi story of course. That always helps in getting some perspective on things and makes me feel a little better. I’ve been thinking about an idea for one, it’s not about things changing but it is about how sometimes things aren’t as you expect them to be. In this case it’s related to the “Road to Euro 2016” trading cards. I had initially decided not to collect them but ended up getting the starter pack anyway because they didn’t have the sticker album and I had been pretty set on getting it. I couldn’t countenance the idea of leaving with nothing, I stupidly had not let myself consider the possibility that it may not be there. I don’t understand why it wasn’t, it’s out elsewhere in Europe. I know I could get one online from Serbia but it’s just the album, not the starter pack that comes with five packets of stickers and comes encased in a plastic wrapper. There’s something special about getting it from the store like that and bringing it home yourself. I hate how careless they are with release dates, why are they keeping it such a secret, don’t they want people to buy their albums and why the staggered release, why do the eastern European countries get it first?
And now I’ve gone completely off the point which was about things not always being as you expect them to be and how to deal with that. The problem here is related to how the cards are stored, the binder that comes in the starter pack does not have enough room for all the cards in the collection, not even enough space for all of the regular cards, forget about the special ones as well. Which is why they are not numbered no doubt, there would be no point in numbering them when there aren’t enough slots for all of them. That was the other thing I was annoyed about, that the slots aren’t numbered, which means you have to count your way through the pages if you wanted to put the cards in order.
I’ve got the beginnings of the story in which Jogi begins to collect these cards, something which Hansi is not pleased about and he’s even less pleased when he finds out that Jogi has box of cards for him too because he not only needs someone to trade with but someone to battle against too. I guess I could add to that him discovering the problem with the lack of space and Hansi teaching him about how to deal with situations when they don’t turn out as they thought you would.
Writing that may make me feel a little better but it doesn’t help at all in solving the two practical concerns. First where I’m going to put the rest of the cards, that can be solved by buying one of the tins I looked at online, that means spending more than I had planned to on this but now I don’t have any other choice. It’s annoying, I have to spend more and it still doesn’t exactly resolve the problem, not to my satisfaction anyhow.That’s going to bug me, the fact that there’s always going to be cards missing from the binder.
The second problem is unsolvable, Jogi solved it easily enough, he just bought Hansi a box of his own cards. I however don’t have anyone to buy a box for and even if I did, I can’t make them be interested in playing the game. I’ll just have to settle for collecting them instead of battling. I can still trade cards at least, I can trade them online same as the stickers which is something. At least I won’t get stuck with a pile of useless doubles.
It’s not all bad news today, Paderborn did as expected lose to Wolfsburg which means they stay in the relegation zone and more importantly Freiburg hold on to their spot of safety for now. Timm Klose and Bas Dost got the goals for Wolfsburg. A picture of Dost celebrating and one from the post match interview in which he’s wearing a Paderborn shirt:
As promised, the video of Junuzovic’s goal, I don’t however have any pictures of him celebrating, to be more precise I have no clear or good ones so just the video will have to suffice.
It’s a very strange week this week. For once Jogi’s teams did better than Hansi’s. Freiburg drew, Stuttgart won and Frankfurt won. But for Hansi Bayern lost, Hoffenheim lost (to Frankfurt) and only Köln won with them beating Schalke 2-0. That’s a great result for them, they’ve found it difficult to score goals all season especially at home and with this victory their survival in the top flight is assured now.
On the subject of things not being all bad, here’s one more thing to be happy about, a Jogi video being at the top of my youtube list:
And now the stickers of the day, this lot is very much a Hansi themed one with a Bayern player, half of the team, the badge for his former team Sandhausen and one for Hoffenheim. Also there is my first Freiburg player since starting this collection, Vladimir Darida:
Posted in Die Mannschaft, Jogi Löw
Tagged Joachim "Jogi" Löw, Lukas Podolski, Marco Reus, Roman Weidenfeller, Ron-Robert Zieler
The title could equally have been the much more succinct “The Penalty that wasn’t” but such a title would suggest that the Bayern game was the most interesting thing that happened this weekend and that the league and the world begins and ends with Bayern, it doesn’t.
The weekend began with a bottom of the table clash between Stuttgart and Hertha Berlin, it was the scrappy relegation fight it promised to be with neither team getting the better of each other in the end, neither of them were willing to risk the point they would gain from the draw, especially Stuttgart who despite picking up that point still remain at the bottom of the league. Now their fans are starting to get angry with some eighty of them turning on a policeman at the game, the officer in question felt threatened enough to pull his gun and fire a warning shot. With the fans starting to get angry and rumors starting to fly about Huub Stevens getting sacked, things do not look good for Stuttgart. Just like the previous season they are going from one crisis to the next, difference is Stevens was the one who saved them last season, now it seems they’ve got themselves into a mess even he may not be able to get them out of.
The second and main game of importance, at least to me, was SC Freiburg v SV Werder Bremen, this wasn’t exactly a relegation clash given Bremen’s significant improvement since the taking of Viktor Skrypnyk though it was a rather scrappy and closely fought encounter. They were pretty evenly matched but it was Bremen that took all three points thanks to a beauty of a goal from Franco Di Santo. The result means Freiburg remain one from bottom, in the second automatic relegation place.
Stupidity abounds this week with the referee Tobias Welz’s controversial decision to award a penalty towards Bayern for Robert Lewandowski getting kicked in the head. Such a decision is completely absurd, how can it be a high boot when he had his head so close to the ground? If you choose to take the risk of getting that close to the grass, then you can’t complain when you get a boot to the head like that. It was especially controversial seeing as Bayern were at the time drawing 1-1 with Hannover and it’s not a definite thing that they would have been able to get another one. Hannover took the lead with a surprise goal from Kiyotake, true Bayern were able to equalise quickly but Hannover did not make it easy for them at all. It’s nice to be Bayern I guess, you get penalties given to you for no real reason and get away with ridiculous tackles like Müller’s rugby like tackle in the Paderborn game a few weeks ago.
That decision which may have contributed to Bayern picking up the three points is especially controversial in light of Wolfsburg losing to Augsburg. Though I admit, it’s pretty unlikely that anything will stop Bayern from winning the title yet again.
There was also some stupidity in the Hamburger SV v Borussia Dortmund game, between Rafael van der Vaart (who had only been on the field a few minutes) for some reason pushing Subotic into Weidenfeller who in another slapstick moment falls over, there’s more comedy when Van der Vaart goes down like a feather after being pushed by Subotic and Weidenfeller then acts the idiot, no doubt trying to save his injured pride.
Sunday provided just as much excitement as Saturday with a terrific game between 1. FC Köln and Eintracht Frankfurt. Frankfurt dominated the first half in terms of possession but didn’t get a single shot on goal. Köln were 1-0 up at half time, a situation which was soon rectified upon the resumption of the second half with Alexander’s Meier’s seventeenth goal of the season. With that and the penalty he successfully took towards the end of the game, he’s now one ahead of Arjen Robben in the goal stakes. But it was Köln who took what is only their second home win of the season, before this weekend they have only scored five goals at home all season, and then they score four in one game, incredible. Their three goals in the second half coming from Marcel Risse, Yuya Osaka and Anthony Ujah, the last one is quite funny, not because of the goal but because of his celebration with Hennes the goat. That’s Köln’s mascot, named for legendary player and manager Hennes Weisweiler.
This is the moment in question:
The week and this post ends with the Pokal quarter final draw. Freiburg have been drawn with Wolfsburg. Raphael Honigstein on the European Football show: “that looks like a foregone conclusion.” Thanks for your optimism Raphael, whatever happened to the “magic of the Pokal?” Interesting draw, seeing as Freiburg play Wolfsburg this Sunday. Thomas Schneider did the draw, interesting fact, his last involvement in the Pokal was of a different nature and a little more direct. He was in charge of Stuttgart last season when they lost to Freiburg 2-1 in the second round. Freiburg met Stuttgart in the previous season as well, that time losing to them 2-1 in the semi final. It was the first time ever they had reached the semi final.
Posted in Fußball, SC Freiburg
Tagged Borussia Dortmund, Eintracht Frankfurt, Hertha Berlin, Roman Weidenfeller, SC Freiburg, Vfb Stuttgart
There are just too many good games this weekend, and four of them that I want to see are all at the same time. The four games being Freiburg v Hoffenheim, Paderborn v Bayern, Mainz v Frankfurt and Augsburg v Leverkusen. There’s also Köln v Hannover but that’s at 17:30 so no problems there, my only problem with watching that game is that the commentator will most likely ruin the result of the Bayern game. At least when I watch the Freiburg game I know to not pay any attention at half time so as to not see the scores listed, but there’s no way to avoid the commentator ruining the result. Not forgetting of course Wolfsburg who play Hertha on Sunday, that should provide plenty of excitement.
I wonder if I can find time to watch a repeat of Frankfurt’s and Augsburg’s games, all I have lined up are the remaining Euro 2008 games so I suppose if I forgo any major Playstation time I could do it and then plan a Fallout themed evening on Sunday after the two games that day to make up for it. At least I’ll have plenty of peace and quiet to watch the games in, half term is finally over come Monday.
Friday night’s game didn’t disappoint at any rate with Dortmund beating Stuttgart 3-2, not as much drama as last week but still a good game to watch on a Friday night though no slapstick moments of comedy for Weidenfeller tonight. Shame for Stuttgart, they got gifted an opportunity with that penalty early in the game, if they had managed to get a goal a little earlier they may have been able to equalise but I guess it wasn’t meant to be. A little moment of drama at the end seeing Stuttgart striker Ibisevic and Weidenfeller getting in each others faces. Ibsisevic in his time has put six goals past Weidenfeller so he has good reason to dislike him.
It’s looking more and more unlikely that Stuttgart will be avoiding relegation this season, everyone else is showing some sign of improvement and with Mainz having joined the list of teams who have parted company with their manager, one can expect them to start doing a little better soon too. Apparently a team shows signs of improvement whenever a team sacks a manager, and not because the old manager was bad and the new one is better, I think I read that in Soccernomics, I can’t remember the exact reasons, something to do with the effect the process has on the team, the players playing better in order to impress the new manager maybe. That’s definitely a book worth reading again, like I needed an excuse to do so.
Of course Stuttgart are already on their second manager this season, with Armin Veh having left last year and then being replaced by Huub Stevens, I wonder will they end up going through as many managers as they did last season. Maybe they can take Schneider back, I shouldn’t say that I know, nor would that actually happen. I’m still finding his presence very disconcerting for lack of a better word, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to him being there. I don’t dislike him, I have no reason to, it’s just the change that’s bothersome.
It’s been a busy week this week, Bundesliga repeats, Champions League, Europa League and in between watching some of Germany’s games from Euro 2008. It’s Bayern’s Champions League game that’s of interest to me at the moment, they played Ukrainian team Shakhtar Donetsk and surprisingly drew 0-0. It’s not the game itself that’s of interest to me but a conversation about it, someone made the mistake of sending me a link related to football in Ukraine. The person in question does not like football at all, I suspect they were trying to be friendly, trying to show an interest in my interests and all that.
Since they brought up Ukrainian football I figured I could talk about Bayern’s game and provide a little interesting trivia about the former USSR team. This doesn’t seem to have been the right thing to do, though I can’t figure out why, after all I was staying on topic, I didn’t go off on a tangent nor did I provide them with an essay on the subject, just a comment on how the game went and some interesting facts. Here’s what I don’t get, why pretend to show an interest at all? And surely if you are going to pretend to show an interest then don’t you have to commit to it, you can’t start a conversation about something and then stop listening. If the person in question was a NT I wouldn’t even be obsessing over this, I would have just written it off as one of countless misunderstandings, but when the person in question is a fellow Aspie, well then I don’t know what to make of it. I thought being friends with other autistic people was a good idea, being on the same wavelength and everything, turns out it can be just as much as a minefield as friendships with NTs.
I know I’m not in a particularly good mood in regards to to other people right now and everything in general, with that in mind I shouldn’t be allowing myself to think over any of this, but I can’t help but wonder, what is the point of having friends again? I wonder can I work this out by being logical, by making a list of the pros and cons of the situation.
Somewhat of a tangent but also related in a way, in one of the forums I lurk on someone was talking about how they are getting used to how direct Germans can be (I think they’ve moved there), well that wouldn’t be a problem for me, I would appreciate a little more directness in social interaction.
Continuing the world cup numbers fun yesterday I got some views from the US and from France, France being the 1998 hosts and the US the 1994 hosts. In another amusing twist I also got some views from Croatia, funny given that just the other day I watched the Euro 2008 match in which they beat Germany 2-1. Sadly no views from Italy, then it would have been perfect, given that the hosted the 1990 world cup when Germany won it.
I’ve also had some fun making a GIF of Roman’s moment of misfortune, I’m sorry Roman I really am but it was too good a moment not to make a GIF of:
I keep watching it again and again, waiting for it to make some sense. No matter how many times you watch it, that doesn’t happen, it does however get funnier every time I see it.
I guarantee that moment will make the list when they put together the funniest moments of the second half of the season. It’s funny, Weidenfeller made the list of funniest moments for the first half of the season as well because of the time he threw the ball out, straight into the back of the head of his own team-mate Henrikh Mkhitaryan.
Other than watching the Europa league last night, I also did something else that was a little different. I wrote and posted something that I wasn’t 100% sure of, I like what I’ve written but I’m not sure as to how good it is. It’s not easy writing dialogue for a character like Dr. King Schultz, not when his creator is someone as skilled with words as Quentin Tarantino is. Knowing that I’ll never be able to write dialogue that is of that standard made it a little easier to just have some fun with it all.
Also having fun with numbers at the moment is Dutchman Bas Dost, he scored two goals for Wolfsburg last night in their Europa League tie against Sporting Lisbon, bringing his tally to six goals in two games now after he scored four last Saturday against Leverkusen. The game was fun to watch and it was great to get to see Wolfsburg play, I don’t often get a chance to do so. However it feels weird watching football on Thursday, it’s an aberration since I don’t usually watch the Europa League. I think next week I may record the game and watch it on a Friday, just to make it a little less strange.
On a slightly related note, I finally finished reading the book about Robert Enke. I could have finished it a few days ago, I only had six pages left but I kept putting it off. Where I left it, it was two days before he died. I know it’s illogical and stupid but I kept thinking if I don’t read it then he won’t die. And the more I kept thinking that, the harder it was to convince myself to finish the book. The last few pages were as difficult as I expected them to be, reading about his wife thinking that he may be getting better because he was smiling again. No-one knew of course that he had already decided to kill himself, that was why he was able to smile, because he knew he would be free from the darkness soon.
