Oh, Come On
By: Abby | February 28th, 2008The Friday Bundesliga game this week is Hertha v. MSV Duisburg. Normally, when a Bundesliga game is played on Friday, that means that GolTV shows it. Because there aren’t any other games being played on Friday. It’s just the Bundesliga. They have the monopoly on Friday. So I was looking forwards to being able to watch Hertha, something that doesn’t happen very often for me (yes, that does make it difficult to blog about the team).
So imagine my surprise when I check the schedule and it turns out GolTV are not showing Hertha. Instead, they’re showing a replay of Arsenal v. AC Milan. Which was last Wednesday. Also, they showed it last week, and more this week, and I love Arsenal a whole lot but really, how many times does it have to be replayed? Especially when there are other things happening- like games that are live.
Granted, Hertha versus the last-ranked team in the Bundesliga doesn’t have the draw or star power of Arsenal v. AC Milan. 9 out of 10 people, when faced with the choice of watching live Arsenal v. AC Milan or live Hertha v. MSV Duisburg, would pick the Arsenal game. But the game was a week and a half ago- surely that’s long enough for anyone to have seen it one of the other times it was shown.
Grrr.
Well, what I and the rest of North America won’t be seeing is Hertha against MSV Duisburg. They were promoted last season and look to be going down in this one. We beat them in the away fixture (one of two away wins this season). Their win against Bielefeld took them off the foot of the table, but only to second-last. They’re on 17 points to our 27.
That doesn’t mean they’ll be easy- as Jan pointed out here, they don’t play badly. They play better than Bielefeld, who it took a 93rd-minute goal to beat. They’ve given a lot of teams a tough time but have dropped a lot of needless points, which is what’s been killing them.
Jan isn’t the only one thinking Duisburg isn’t a walk- keeper Jaroslav Drobny calls them more prolific in front of goal than Bielefeld and worth watching out for. So while it’s not the glamour of Arsenal-AC Milan, it’s entirely possible that it will have more goals.
I hope so, anyway.
Category: match preview
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Comments
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That sucks. If it was some awesome display of football, I might understand wanting to show it again, but replaying a 0-0 draw instead of the one dependable Bundesliga match a week? You have a right to be pissed.
Posted from
United States
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I know, seriously. They’re showing some good Bundesliga lineups this weekend, but the Friday game is always the one chance to see some of the smaller clubs. Like Hertha. I really want to know why they’re skipping it for a replay of a game long gone.
Posted from
United States -
The answer is probably similar to the arguments people used against the 39th game: Sure people around the world would love to watch Arsenal vs Chelsea, but who wants to watch Derby County play Birmingham? The same is probably the sad truth about Duisburg and Hertha. Who outside of Germany wants to watch this match?
Maybe you could write a letter to GolTV and tell them how frustrating it is to blog about Hertha, when they keep showing a 0-0 draw instead of Hertha matches. Especially because Hertha’s next match is on a Friday again.
Posted from
United States -
You know what really sucks? Do you know *how* many times that Milan-Arsenal match has been on recently? Seriously, it’s been re-played like 6 times. They NEVER reply the B’liga games (only shown live) and their B’liga news magazine is on each day, but it’s a weekly magazine that’s REPLAYED each day.
My only consolation was that HSV played Bayern on Sunday and Ray Hudson was on the call.
Posted from
United States -
Abby, do know about the myp2p.eu site? On Fridays there are a lot of channels that show the games…
Posted from
Germany -
[...] Abby also presents a practical example of how an improved GolTV schedule could help improve the working conditions for Bundesliga bloggers. (Hertha Offside) [...]
Posted from
United States -
I keep running into the issue with Macs.
And it doesn’t help on Friday, since the games are on at 11:30 or 11:45 in the morning and I’m at work. I was hoping that I could Tivo it…Posted from
United States
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