30-year-old wunderkind manager Julian Nagelsmann will earn the plaudits for masterminding Hoffenheim’s 2-0 victory over Bayern Munich on Saturday, but another precocious young individual has also made the headlines for his performance in the match: 13-year-old ball boy Umut Tohumcu, who was making his debut in the role.
After spending the majority of the 2016-17 season on the bench at Bayern Munich, Renato Sanches made his Premier League debut with Swansea City on Sunday and looked just like a footballer that’d spent a lot of time riding the pine.
Without a goal or an assist in Borussia Dortmund’s 2-0 win over Hertha Berlin on Saturday, Christian Pulisic mania wasn’t allowed to grip the nation. But a “quiet” week from the 18-year-old also allows us to dissect his performance in a more serious manner.
What the analysis reveals should obviously already be clear, but let’s just belabor the point: Pulisic isn’t a gimmick. He’s not the fevered creation of a nation starved of a world-class talent. He’s actually just really, really good.
At 33 years of age, Bayern Munich must surely be contemplating how they’ll ever manage to replace Arjen Robben on the right wing. Robben gives the impression of having been around this game forever, and with good reason. The 2017-18 campaign will mark his 18th as a professional. The fact that he’s been bald for the majority of them and is permanently recovering from/suffering a muscle injury only adds to his distinguished agedness.
After FIFA’s strangely inept trials of the Video Assistant Referee system at both the 2016 Club World Cup and 2017 Confederations Cup, it looks as though Germany will once again prove to be an ever-reliable fountainhead for efficiency and mastery, now with regards to using replay technology in football.
VAR decisions have been overly long, miscommunicated and occasionally downright baffling, but before the start of the new Bundesliga season, the German DFB made it clear that they didn't envision these issues plaguing their own use of the system.
The English Premier League, La Liga and Liga MX may be more popular in America than the Bundesliga, but the German league deserves your attention, this year more than ever. The Bundesliga is essentially a year-long World Cup primer.
The Bundesliga features everything that will decide the 2018 World Cup in Russia. If you want the knowledge to impress your friends when the rest of them decide to pay attention to soccer next summer, follow the Bundesliga this season.
Here’s what you should know about the 2017-18 Bundesliga season and, by extension, the 2018 World Cup.
Before Pep Guardiola came down from the mountaintop proclaiming the new age of the 4-3-3 with attacking width providing by the wide defenders, nobody knew what a full back was. Sure, Roberto Carlos once struck a football so hard that we all admitted their existence, but that was all anyone knew about the position. What did they do? Why were they there? It was hard to know and even harder to explain.
Christian Pulisic’s World Cup year starts now, and the wall-to-wall coverage of the 18-year-old American’s season with Borussia Dortmund couldn’t have started with a bigger bang. In the starting lineup for DFB-Pokal winners Borussia Dortmund against Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich in the curtain-raising DFL-Supercup, the host side raced out to an early lead behind Pulisic.