They’re Fighting Over Who? / Wolfsburg Preview

By: Abby | September 12th, 2008

As some of you might know, I also co-write Arsenal Offside, where I seem to be constantly posting philosophical-ish rants that annoy people. (Sorry? It’s sort of interesting, what differing teams bring out of me, blog-wise.) Mostly, the two sides of my blogging life don’t meet, despite Lulu Favre’s stated ambition to be Arsene Wenger. So imagine my surprise when reports came in that Mineiro was training with Arsenal. He’s been a free agent since rejecting Hertha’s contract offer at the beginning of the summer. Arsenal is in grave need of a defensive midfielder, and at 33 he’d be a useful fill-in until some of the kids come of age.

For reals? And now even more reports are saying that Chelsea might steal the Brazilian. With Michael Essien out until at least April, they’re also in need of a defensive midfielder.

If you’d told me that Arsenal and Chelsea would be battling for one of our over-30 ex-players, I would have not believed you. But I’m clearly an awful predictor at football.

Which brings us to tomorrow. The ever-ambitious VfL Wolfsburg come to the Olympiastadion for an afternoon visit. They’ve had two 2-2 draws in the 2 most recent Bundesliga game, most recently coming back from 2 goals down to draw against Bochum. Last season ex-Bayern Munich manager Felix Magath led die Wölfe to a rather surprising 5th place finish, and they’re certainly looking to build on that. They’ve got corporate backing from Volkswagen and Magath is nothing if not ambitious- he wants to turn them into a Champions League side, and are spending Volkswagen’s money to do so. Among the most high-profile moves to the Bundesliga this season were the Italian defensive duo of Andrea Barzagli and Cristian Zaccardo, both making their way to Wolfsburg over the summer, and those two weren’t the only additions- there was also Zvjezdan Misimović, ex of Nürnberg and very a very impressive player (he got a hat-trick this weekend in Bosnia’s game against Estonia). They mean business now, and won’t let anything so trivial as all of Germany thinking of them as a plastic club stop them.

And, of course, they’ve got an ex-Herthaner on the squad as well. Iranian-born German striker Ashkan Dejagah was considered to be one of our bright prospects a few years back, along with the Boateng brothers. He’s a talented but somewhat erratic striker, and made himself a focus of controversy last year. The 22-year-old left on a Bosman to join Wolfsburg in 2007, and in the way these things work, will have to be watched carefully because he might score on us. He has also managed to become fit again after being theoretically injured in midweek.

They also may be missing captain Josue, who was with the Brazil squad in the 0-0 draw with Bolivia and might be tired after a long flight.

As for us, we’re hoping to bounce back from that result in Bavaria and get back to the better form of our opening two games. The big story will be when (or if) Andriy Voronin plays. He’s only had one training session with us, having gone off on international duty with Ukraine, but Arne Freidrich doesn’t consider that a problem. He is, after all, an experienced professional with a lot of good Bundesliga experience. I, for one, am seriously excited about seeing him line up with Marko Pantelic, and not just to see that much hair in one front line. (And with Raffael as well- the Brazilian’s wife is about to give birth, but he’ll be at the game anyway. He’s that dedicated, and that awesome.) I am loving him already.

The other debate is over the defense- who will play? Arne Friedrich missed Germany’s qualifiers with injury, but looks to be coming back into fitness. Steve von Bergen had a bit of a nightmare against Bayern last time around, but he’s normally better. And there’s the continuing issues with Josip Simunic, who Lulu is not all that fond of (but the rest of the team is). There’s also Kaká. No, not that one. The defending one. The one that we’ve signed. I suppose we’ll see tomorrow, when they line up?

The game is at home, and for all of Wolfsburg’s ambitions, their start hasn’t been any more impressive than ours. The new signings are still gelling over there, and we’ve been, Bayern apart, looking pretty good. We could get an actual result here.

And in good news, for once, from das Bild (who seem to be totally in love with Yulia Voronin)- Amine Chermiti says that he’ll be playing again in three weeks. I don’t want him to rush back if he’s not fully fit, but I’m excited nonetheless.