Ascona Diary: Bungee Jumping Journalists
Here’s a short and quick pre-match round up of training camp related news.
As you can see from the photo, the players are having fun – lots of fun – during training. Though, given that those photos come from the few sessions, where the team opens up to the press, it could just as well all be a big act to fool the outside world. Because most of what happens and what is being worked on still is just for Jogi’s eyes only.
The DFB has acknowledged that this is a sub-optimal situation for the horde of journalists who have made Ascona their Euro base camp as well. So they thought of ways to entertain them, while Jogi briefs his team on the strengths and weaknesses of Luca Modric. They came up with the idea to send the journalists to a nearby dam and have them jump into the abyss. I sense a lot of wishful thinking in that idea. Though, there were no reports of elastic ropes, that were accidentally too long or any such thing, so supposedly all journalists survived the bungee experience.
Hertha’s Arne Friedrich has once again been praised. This time it wasn’t Philipp Lahm bowing to the ping pong king, it was Jogi Löw, who was very impressed by his performance during the training sessions. Quote: “He is in fantastic shape. I have rarely seen him that strong.” Now, given that he said similar things about Marko Marin, we might have to fear, that he decides to send Arne home soon. Friedrich definitely won’t be in the starting line up against Croatia. But being able to play both as right-back and central defender there could be scenarios, in which he could still get his chance to feature and shine.
Lukas Podolski has naturally also taken centre stage in the last couple of days. Miroslav Klose was ready to provoke some internet flame wars by stating that Podolski is better than Ronaldo. A right wing politician in Poland has also been in attention seeking mode and tried to get some publicity by threatening to go to court to strip Podolski of his Polish citizenship. Spiegel Online has the full story.
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Jan, so I see you found Klose’s comments on Goal.com. I had also heard about Klose saying Podolski is better than Ronaldo. It has become quite a heated debate over there already. I only read a few of the comments and can already sense it’s really heated.
Regarding Podolski’s Polish citizenship, Podolski said that he never had a Polish passport in the beginning and when he started to play for the Germany U-21s, that was when the Polish FA started to take notice of him.
http://www.teamtalk.com/football/story/0,16368,3033_3680975,00.html (the link I had found on Podolski’s reactions)
Anyhow, Podolski’s past was a subject of interest in our newspapers here (one of the links I found – http://www.todayonline.com/pdf_open.asp?id=0906HNR003) the day after the 2-0 win over Poland. One of the journalists here praised him for his show of maturity for not celebrating the two goals he scored and saying something like he showed how far he has come since being voted the Best Young Player in the 2006 World Cup. I found the online version of the article (it only last a week long and so one have to read it before next Tuesday).
The link I was referring to – http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/sports/story/0,4136,167081-1213135140,00.html?
Given of the history of football rivalry between here in Singapore and our neighbours up north in Malaysia (it goes back since especially in the 70s and whenever both national teams meet in a tournament, the journalists here will be all fired up…sort of; but still in recent encounters, we have the upper hand
), the journalist use the analogy in the opening paragraphs to analyse Podolski’s lack of goal celebrations.
And I’m watching the Croatia-Germany match at the moment as well.
Posted from
Singapore




errr..bit of an irrelevant comment really above.
Posted from
United Kingdom


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