Frank Ribery has yet to appear for Bayern Munich this season.

In more injury news, Bayern Munich’s Franck Ribery, yet to appear for his club this season, has said he hope to make his return next week against Steaua Bucharest when München open Champions League play.

The German Footballer of the Year has been out all season recovering from an ankle injury suffered while playing for France in Euro 2008.  If he were to return next week, the three month recovery time would be very close to the short-end of the projection made when he had surgery at the beginning of summer.  The most pessimistic of original prognosis had the 25-year-old attacking midfielder out until November.  If Ribery’s hopes come true, he will have returned having missed only three Bundesliga matches and no Champions League play.

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Any kind of panic Bayern supporters were about to embark on can be tabled after this weekend’s victory over Hertha Berlin.  Luca Toni looked like his normal healthy self.  Martin Demichelis returned to the lineup, with immediate effect.  Bastian Schweinsteiger continued to carry over his European Championship form.  Philip Lahm scored a beautiful goal, and even Miroslav Klose get on the scoresheet (albeit via penalty kick).  The league champions looked like the team Jurgen Klinsmann said would challenge for in the Champions League in picking apart Hertha Berlin, 4-1.

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Aside from the top six teams in the league, I was not very familiar with the Eredivisie before going the research for these predictions.  As was the case when I forecasted the Bungesliga and the Portuguese Liga, I am somewhat ignorant of Dutch football.  That, however, will not stop me from trying to become a real follower, with this being my first stab.  To the right, you will see my prognostications for the upcoming season, which starts this weekend.

For these predictions, I used the same method I used for all my other previews.  I looked at every position on every team and asked how that player will effect the team’s goals for and goal against.  Once I had that, I was able to project a goals for, goal against ratio, with which I was able to simulate a double-round robin season.  I wrote a script to do this simulation and have used it for every prediction save Ligue 1’s.  For the Eredivisie, I ran the script 10,000 times to minimize the effect of any statistical noise.

And if that doesn’t make football sound boring, nothing will.

When you watch Eredivisie football, the thing which stands out is the wide-out play.  There are more teams playing three forwards in the Dutch league than anywhere else.  In addition, teams play very wide, attacking football.  This leads to a ton of goals.  The league had one team, Ajax, almost break 100 goals last season.  It is an athlete’s league, a scorer’s league, and almost the mirror image of football in Portugal.  You can see why so many players in this league make an easy transition to the Bundesliga.

Ajax added Marco van Basten and retained almost all of their key players.  They are in a great position to unseat four-time champion PSV Eindhoven, who lost Jefferson Farfan in addition to their starting goaltender, Huerelho Gomes.  PSV only finished three points ahead of Ajax last season and had a worse goal differential.  Having retained leading scorer and new captain Klass-Jan Huntelaar, added van Basten and Miralem Sulejmani (who scored 15 goals for Heerenveen last season).  This is the season where PSV - the Porto, Bayern, Lyon of the Eredivisie - slip to an Ajax side partly motivated by missing out on the Champions League thanks to the now discarded post-season playoffs.  As you can see to the right, I don’t think it will be particularly close.

That playoff format, used also in the Dutch second division (Eerste Divisie), is why a team that finished sixth amongst those vying for promotion finds itself in the Eredivisie.  ADO Den Haag won the promotion playoffs and like, FC Twente (who won the Eredivisie playoff to qualify for Champions League qualifying) looked out of their element against Arsenal, ADO Den Haag will look out of their element in the Eredivisie.

In between top and bottom, the team that has done the most to improve itself is AZ, a team that struggled (relatively) to score goals last season but brought in a series of scorers to help move them back into a UEFA Cup qualifying spot.  They should, at least, be competitive.

The one big surprise I have, after I ran the numbers, is Heerenveen.  In my simulations, there were basically as good as PSV.  I thought, in losing one of their three best goal scorers, they would take a step back from their fifth place finish, but as I looked closer a.) their fifth place finish seemed to understate their performance, and b.) other teams were regressing more than them.

But the story of this Eredivisie season will be at the top, where the league’s two storied clubs will against fight it out for the title.  I have Ajax finally breaking through, but as I mentioned at the onset of this post, what do I know?

One of the more exciting days of the European club football season is the day the Champions League group stage is drawn.

The 32 teams that have qualified for the group stage are drawn into eight, four-team groups.  Before that happens, all teams are broken into four pots, labeled A through D, where they are grouped according to a team’s strength (as determined by a formula called a coefficient).  Each of the eight groups can have no more than one team from each pot, no more than one team from a country.  The eight groups end up pretty even.

The draw is fun because you end up with a series of matches which, in addition to being high profile based on the quality of the teams involved, are rare.  In the days before the draw, you start considering the possibilities and potential story lines:  Chelsea and Fiorentina in a group, forcing Adrian Mutu to play the club he owes £14 million; Marseille being slotted with Arsenal months after having sold them Samir Nasri, and potentially getting Bayern Munich in the group, so they would have to face Franck Ribery; Barcelona being slotted with a Zenit St. Petersburg team whose star, Andrei Arshavin, so badly wanted to play at Camp Nou; FC Porto being grouped with Inter Milan and facing Jose Mourinho.

Here’s how the eight groups ended up being drawn, with the clubs listed in order of the group they were drawn from:  A to D.  Continue Reading »

It as another week of unspectacular picks for me in the Bundesliga, where a number of ties make it hard for me to get any traction. The highlight, for me, was hitting the Dortmund-Munich game on the nose, though that’s a bit of a disingenuous boast, as I didn’t anticipate Mark van Bommel getting red carded. I probably should have seen that coming, though. It was the easiest prediction of the week.

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Bayer Leverkusen, in getting their first win of the season, was one step ahead of Stuttgart all match.

Bundesliga Standings Rank Club GP PTS DIFF 1 Hoffenheim 2 6 4 2 Schalke 04 2 4 3 3 Hertha Berlin 2 4 2 4 Borussia Dortmund 2 4 1 5 Hamburger SV 2 4 1 6 VfL Wolfsburg 2 4 1 7 Bayer Leverkusen 2 3 1 8 VfB Stuttgart 2 3 0 9 Karlsruhe 2 3 0 10 Bayern Munich 2 2 0 11 Werder Bremen 2 2 0 12 Arminia Bielefeld 2 2 0 13 VfL Bochum 2 1 -1 14 1. FC Koln 2 1 -1 15 Frankfurt 2 1 -2 16 Energie Cottbus 2 1 -3 17 Hannover 96 2 1 -3 18 Borussia M’gladbach 2 0 -3 Results August 22, 2008 Hannover 96 0 0 Energie Cottbus August 23, 2008 Hoffenheim 1 0 Borussia M’gladbach VfB Stuttgart 0 2 Bayer Leverkusen Hamburg SV 2 1 Karlsruhe Borussia Dortmund 1 1 Bayern Munich Werder Bremen 1 1 Schalke 04 Hertha Berlin 1 1 Arminia Bielefeld August 24, 2008 1. FC Koln 1 1 Frankfurt VfL Bochum 2 2 VfL Wolfsburg Next Week Home Away August 29, 2008 Karlsruhe 1. FC Koln August 30, 2008 VfL Wolfsburg Frankfurt Borussia M’gladbach Werder Bremen Energie Cottbus Borussia Dortmund Bayer Leverkusen Hoffenheim Arminia Bielefeld Hamburg SV Schalke 04 VfL Bochum August 31, 2008 Bayern Munich Hertha Berlin VfB Stuttgart Hannover 96

The schedule gave us a special weekend in the Bundesliga, but those of us who follow the league will need to savor it. The great match-ups of this weekend are absent in the upcoming, third round schedule, after which the league will be off until September 12.

Horrible.

To bide the time, we will have to sit on what we learned from the Werder-Schalke, Stuttgart-Bayer, and Dortmund-Bayern matches.  Let’s start with the last one.

What we learned from the Borussia Dortmund-Bayern Munich match on Saturday is Mark Van Bommel is an idiot.  Bayern played almost the whole match with ten men because of van Bommel’s thuggery, and although I have read some comments in the days that followed his red card saying he is being singled out, that view is hard to justify.  Van Bommel clubbed a guy in the head.  If he is being singled out, it’s justly so.

Word that Bayern has warned the Dutchman he could lose the captaincy if he doesn’t stay on the field is good news.  It’s about time somebody starts taking his dirty play seriously, particularly the injury-riddled club that needs him.  Bayern got an unfit Luca Toni back, forming a surprisingly ineffective pair with Miroslav Klöse, but they need van Bommel to hold down thei defense.

Van Bommel got kicked out of the match with his team already down 1-0 and staring a five point deficit in the table straight in the face.  Thankfully, some suspect Dortmund defending gave Tim Borowski an easy equalizer in the second half.  Given the circumstances, it was a good point won for Bayern, though Dortmund should regret the lost opportunity to get to six points.

From the Stuttgart-Bayer Leverkusen match we learned that there is still a gap between Stuttgart and the top six clubs in the league, of which Bayer is apart.  Leverkusen came back after a disappointing loss in Round 1 to Dortmund to get a relatively easy win on the road, building on some of the momentum they had at match’s end the week before.

Leverkusen will be fine.  Stuttgart, although they are getting strong play in goal from Jens Lehmann, we can’t be so sure about.

From the Werder Bremen-Schalke 04 match, we learned that Schalke has lost too many players in midfield.  Playing without Jermaine Jones, Jefferson Farfan and Orlando Engelaar was too much to overcome.  The momentum of their wins over Hannover and Atletico Madrid could not overcome losing more than half of their five man middle.  Ivan Rakitic never got going, and Fabian Ernst had too much to manage in his holding position.

If Schalke can not get healthy for Wednesday’s match in Madrid, they will not make the group phase of Champions League, a somewhat unjust result considering how they played the preceding week.

From Werder Bremen, we learned they can get a result without Diego, something I doubted last week.  They did not get the win over Schalke, but without their best player - a player on whom they depend deeply - it was a point worth taking.  Diego will be back as Werder goes on the road to M’gladbach this week, a match which should be a nice re-introduction to domestic play for the Olympian.

Bremen also debuted Claudio Pizarro, who returned to the club on loan from Cheslea.  The team had a noticeable boost in energy, even if Pizarro was not particularly effective.  Still, he and Markus Rosenburg fronted an attack that continuously threatened Schalke.  Were it not for a player of the week-worthy performance from Schalke keeper Mathias Schober, Bremen would have gotten three points.

These three matches overshadowed the rest of the fixture list, but of note are the still undefeated Hoffenheim and Hertha Berlin.  Hoffenheim got a result at home against the still pointless M’gladbach while Berlin could only get one at home against Bielefeld.  Neither result is that impressive, and these two clubs have been beneficiaries of easy early schedules.  This weekend that starts to change when Hoffenheim goes to Bayer Leverkusen on Saturday and Berlin goes to Munich on Sunday.  My picks column isn’t until later in the week, but here’s a preview:  Berlin and Hoffenheim combine for no points this weekend.

With none of the league’s top clubs facing off against each other, expect this to be the week where the table starts to take shape.  We could see all of Bremen, Dortmund, Bayern, Schalke, Hamburg, and Bayer get three points.  If you’re put out by me not putting Stuttgart in the group, don’t worry.  They’re likely to win, too.

WFP Bundesliga Rankings

	Rank	Last Week	Club
	1	1	Schalke 04 You hate to see either Schalke or Atletico Madrid go out before the group stage, but the Champions League would be better for having Schalke. As is, I expect Schalke to be early favorites to win the UEFA Cup.
	2	2	Bayern Munich They get a little credit for clawing back against Dortmund with only ten men and with two key players still injured. Franck Ribery’s absence has been well reported, but the player they are really missing is Martin Demichelis.
	3	3	Hamburger SV A business-like win over Karlsruhe, who the book is still out on. Although teams below them played better, their resume is solid: a home win and a point at Munich.
	4	4	Borussia Dortmund Ultimately, they should have gotten more from their match with Bayern, being gifted the advantage by van Bommel. Their win over Leverkusen looks better, though, after Bayer showed so well at Stuttgart.
	5	5	Werder Bremen Even with Schalke’s injuries, it was an impressive result, and they showed a confidence without Diego that was absent the week before. They played much better at the back, limiting Schalke’s opportunities and controlling Kevin Kuranyi.
	6	6	Bayer Leverkusen Their ranking is unchanged, but there is a chasm between this spot an Stuttgart at seven how they controlled. They played this weekend as they did in the second half against Dortmund and got the corresponding result.
	7	7	Stuttgart Have the horses to beat up on the weaker clubs of the league, but against Leverkusen were frustrated and overmatched. It will be interesting to see if the return of Khalid Boulahrouz helps them compete for a European spot. They’re close.
	8	10	Hoffenheim The only perfect them in the league, but they have yet to produce a convincing result. They’ll have their chance this week against Leverkusen. They could lose that match and not fall in these rankings.
	9	8	Hertha Berlin Like Hoffenheim, good early results are built on schedule, not performance. Like Hoffenheim, will have a chance to prove otherwise this week. They face Munch.
	10	9	Arminia Bielefeld With Berlin without a loss and Bremen bouncing back, Bielefeld’s first two results look pretty good. It’s only two points out of six, but for a team that looked to battle relegation, points against good clubs are nothing to scoff at.
	11	12	Karlsruhe Lost to Hamburg but played decent enough to move up a little in these rankings. Unlike some of the clubs around them on the list, they have at least been tested, and although they came up short, they produced a decent result.
	12	13	Wolfsburg Were unimpressive against Bochum but still got a point. With their other result a win over Koln, it’s unclear what we have with this Wolfsburg team.
	13	15	VfL Bochum Showed signs of life against Wolfsburg, enough to were I almost dropped Wolfsburg behind them. Ultimately, they weren’t able to get three points despite playing on their home pitch. Looking decent can only count for so much.
	14	11	Hannover 96 Played in the most boring match of the weekend in a goalless drawn at home against Cottbus. I’m sure that’s what the Bundesliga wants from their Friday night matches.
	15	18	Energie Cottbus The other part of that Friday night disappointment. At least they were the road team. They have that excuse.
	16	14	Borussia M’gladbach Their 3-1 opening weekend loss to Stuttgart at home looks a lot worse now, and with their result this week, M’gladbach has little to recommend them thus far.
	17	17	Frankfurt Their only point has come from Koln. Ouch.
	18	16	1. FC Koln Their only point has come from Frankfurt. Ouch!

Jürgen Klinsmann should have anticipated a tough showing on Saturday at Borussia Dortmund.  Dortmund bounced on Bayer Leverkusen last week and left with a 3-2 road victory to open the season.  Their energy level left Bayer looking under-prepared for the opening match.  It was only towards the end of that match that Leverkusen were truly playing with Dortmund.

Against Bayern Munich, Dortmund again showed that energy.  Continue Reading »

Predictions for the first round of Portugal’s Superliga season are proving a bit dangerous, as I already forgot that Portugal started their season earlier today. As it was with the Bundesliga predictions, I missed the opportunity to predict the Friday night opener. Continue Reading »

With the prerequisite Round 1 surprises, the Bundesliga started last weekend. Those few surprises help keep my pick results modest. Still a decent start (not as bad as Ligue 1), with most of the losses coming in matches that featured two teams I did not get to see in the preseason. Continue Reading »

Hamburger SV have accepted a bid from Manchester City for 22-year-old right back Vincent Kompany.  No personal terms have been agreed to yet, but a move seems likely as Hamburger wants to rid themselves of their formerly prized prospect after a rift has formed over the Olympics.

Hamburg had negotiated a deal with the Belgian football federation that would have their player return from Beijing for last Friday’s Bundesliga start at Bayern Munich.  When Kompany complained about having to leave the Olympics, Hamburg became defensive, publicly noting an agreement had been in place for some time.

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