The Daily Bee: The Foals Fail, Smurfs Suck, and The Dino Dies... again

Hello everyone! It’s your favorite time of the week: Wednesday Daily Bee day! Okay, I don’t think any of us actually look forward to these. Myself included. What do I look forward to, I hear you ask? Well, everyone’s favorite team to laugh at, FC Schalke, lost again.

While Dortmund may play their DFB Pokal fixture today at noon, most Bundesliga teams have already finished their matchups. Lets take a look at some of the notable results:

SV Darmstadt 2 - 1 Monchengladbach

The major upset, at least thus far, of this round is Monchengladbach’s shock defeat to SV Darmstadt. Darmstadt are actually top of the 2. Bundesliga with 12 matches in and were always going to be a stout challenge for the Foals, especially at home. Within the first 25 minutes of the match, things went Teitz up for the visitors. Goalkeeper Yann Sommer went off injured in the 13th minute and Darmstadt forward Phillip Tietz scored on his replacement, Tobias Sippel. Monchengladbach, whos starting 11 featured Thurman, Hofman, Plea, Kone, and Julian Weigl, scored just after halftime to bring things level. Darmstadt, however, had the last laugh as Aaron Seydel won the game in the 79th minute in front of the home fans. Unfortunately for all of us, no Borussia Monchengladbach in the competition means they won’t get their traditional cup win against Bayern Munchen this year.

Hoffenheim 5 - 1 Schalke O4

Schalke are bad this season. Hoffenheim are very not bad this season. Both these points were showcased in Hoffenheim’s 5-1 victory against the Smurfs. Within four days, and two matches, Hoffenheim have put 8 goals past Schalke and have only faced one goal in return. The big talk going into this game was whether or not Schalke will fire their manager, Frank Kramer. Kramer is in the hot seat and currently boasts 2 wins, and 6 defeats in Schalke’s 11 competitive games since his appointment in June. I’m honestly hoping they can Kramer considering I want Schalke to stay in the Bundesliga. That being said, it appears the Gelsenkirchen club are having trouble finding a replacement and might be stuck with Kramer for a bit longer than anticipated.

Also, what on earth is going on with this Hoffenheim lineup:

RB Leipzig 4 - 0 Hamburger SV

Marco Rose’s Leipzig are now 6 games unbeaten and 6-1-2 in his first 9 games in charge. Their victim this week was the good ol’ Bundesliga Dinosaur; Hamburg! Hamburg, who are third place in the 2. Bundesliga this season, now have additional energy to devote to getting themselves back in the first division after being booted by Leipzig. The Bundesliga side completely outclassed the 2. Bundesliga team at home and put up a routine win. It remains to be seen when good news will come out of Hamburg but I’m sure it will be no time soon.

Other matches include:

Lubeck 0 - 3 Mainz 05

Stuttgarter Kickers 0 - 2 Eintracht Frankfurt

Eintracht Braunschweig 1 - 2 Wolfsburg

Elversberg 0 - 1 VFL Bochum’

Waldhof Mannheim 0 - 1 1.FC Nurnberg

The Links

• Roman Burki is making headlines in MLS news this week. It came out that the former Dortmund man is making $1.63 million dollars per year, making him the highest-paid MLS goalkeeper by quite a distance. As an MLS fan, I can tell you that paying 1.63 million dollars of your limited salary cap on a goalkeeper is pretty outrageous even if he has Champions League experience.
• Edin Terzic gave his thoughts on how the team dealt with the aftermath of the Union Berlin game yesterday. Dortmund’s head coach said “On the way back, we watched the game and sat down together the next morning”, apparently he reviewed video with both individuals and the team as a whole. I’m sure we can conclude that he spent the entire morning yelling at Kobel for tripping over himself.
• My article highlight this week is Paul’s “Looking Around the League: The Bundesliga’s Two-Horse Race.” Paul approaches the reality of the Bundesliga with his usual brilliant nihilism in this article highlighting why we should all bend the knee to Bayern once more. Still, as Paul points out, there's a small glimmer of hope from a team who spent their weekend beating Dortmund 2-0.

The Daily Buzz:

What’s your favorite cup run of any team in any sport? I think mine might be UCLA’s run in the March Madness a couple of years back. Didn’t end it with the trophy but was a lot of fun.