Sorry, Jan

Or, We Can’t Quite Quit Marko Pantelic.

An exciting Friday evening (or afternoon, if you’re me) game at the Olympiastadion ended in a 2-1 win for the Berliners. Fifth in a row at home now, and we’ve got the 30 points that esteemed Bundesliga Offside editor Jan predicted we’d have before the winter break, with two games to spare. We had to beat his beloved 1. FC Köln to do it, but all’s fair in love and football, right?

(Please don’t delete me, Jan. ;D )

Anyway, it was an entertaining, fast-paced game, at least I thought so. Although I could be biased. And I did miss the first twelve minutes or so, having thought the game started fifteen minutes after it did. Both teams played at a good pace and looked to play, and the game was pretty open from start to finish. Köln certainly didn’t make it easy for us and were possibly unlucky to not get a point, but in the end, I think it was a well-deserved in for us.

The team that came out was the same lineup that’s been doing so well for us lately, which meant Marko Pantelic was on the bench again. (I wish this saga would end.) A few attempts from both sides (including one I missed from Raffael, which seems to have been a good one) culminated in an excellently-taken goal from Gojko Kacar. A beautiful little flick from Andriy Voronin left him all alone in the Köln box and Kacar fired in past Köln keeper Mondragon. It was a lovely goal, nothing like the defensive-but-effective style we’re supposed to be the proponents of.

Especially since the goal we gave up at the stroke of halftime was anything but fine defensive work. Köln had been pressing- they hit the bar only a few minutes after our goal was scored- and at the stroke of half-time we gave them too much room at the edge of our box. Fabrice Ehret got a good cross off and poor marking from both Simunic and Friedrich allowed Milivoje Novakovič to score. And then the half was over.

We looked good coming back after the break. We started to press forwards better, limiting Köln to long-range shots and free-kicks, of which I thought we gave away far too many throughout the course of the game. Cicero had a header cleared off the line following a corner in the 58th minute, but we were still drawing by the 69th, when Favre decided that the win was more important than the drama and sent in Marko.

He even got the ball into the net within a few minutes of coming on, but it was called off harshly for offside. One of the approximately 80 times Marko was called for offside in those 20 minutes he was on the pitch.

Raffael and other sub Valeri Domovchiyski both missed excellent chances after that following some Köln errors, and as the game wound into the final minutes I was starting to think that perhaps our luck was running out. It would be fitting, that it would be on one of the games I could really watch well. But subs came to the rescue- fit-again Patrick Ebert, who’d came on in the 83rd, sent in an 87th-minute corner and for some reason Köln forgot to mark Pante. Never a good idea, and he sent in a header from a tight angle.

There was still enough time for a late flurry from Köln and a corner that went thankfully wide of Drobny’s post, but in the end, a hard-fought win for us. It was a tough game to be sure, but Köln made more mistakes and (eventually) we punished them.

And, of course, it was Marko Pantelic with the winning goal. The saga goes on, endlessly. We say we don’t need him, and end up doing so. Marko’s agent claims that Lulu is bullying him. It’s a story that won’t end. Truth be told, I’m kind of annoyed by it at this point- it’s the only thing putting a damper on what’s been a fantastic first half of the season. I’m hoping that, however it ends, some things get sorted out in January.

But I won’t dwell on that. What I will dwell on is that, until tomorrow, we’re second in the table. And that due to Bayer Leverkusen and Bayern Munich playing each other tomorrow, we can’t drop lower than third. Third, going into the first week of December.

Yeah, us.

Category: Team News, match reports

Tags: match reports, Team News

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