The Daily Bee: A Reminder to be Grateful for What You Have

Good Morning Fear the Wall

There isn’t a great deal of football news today, and certainly doesn’t appear to be anything that I particularly want to waste my time writing about, so let me regale with you a tale as old as time: Southampton FC are phenomenally bad and you should all count yourselves lucky that you don’t have to support them.

For those of you that have the good fortune to not be keeping up with the goings on at the South Coast’s biggest club (more an indictment of the South Coast than praise of Southampton), they currently rank 90th in the entire football league for points-per-game.

It really can’t get much worse than that, right? WRONG. Last night Southampton fans were offered a brief reprieve from the toils of watching their team prop up the Premier League table, in the form of an FA Cup tie against Grimsby Town, a side that are currently say 16th in League Two (a whole three tiers lower than Saints). But why break the habit of a lifetime by being any less than extremely shit?

Saints conceded two incredibly stupid penalties on their way to a 2-1 loss and a cup exit so shocking that it was deemed to be the biggest piece of sports news this morning on BBC Breakfast (the morning news on BBC One). They even brought Grimsby’s goalscorer, Gavan Holohan, on for an interview, along with a local Grimsby journalist.

The only saving grace here is that, as a lifelong Southampton fan, I long ago lost the capacity to feel embarrassed about how stupid this team is. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that watching Saints week-in, week-out is a deeply unpleasant experience.

Which brings me to the moral of my story. We should all recognise the immense privilege in getting to root for Borussia Dortmund, a team that wins more often than not, plays good football, and even wins a trophy every now and then. I know that they can be frustrating when they manage to pluck a stupid loss from the most unlikely of places, but the vast majority of the time BVB are a joy to watch, and we should make the most of that. Heja BVB!

The Links

• Details of Marco Rose’s departure from Borussia Dortmund have been revealed by (admittedly not very reliable) BILD.
• With reports suggesting that Daichi Kamada to BVB is more or less a done deal, you’d be forgiven for feeling bad for Frankfurt losing one of their best players for nothing. Well, hold that thought, because Florian Plettenberg has reported that Eintracht Frankfurt are replacing him with Houssem Aouar! He hasn’t been at his best (or fittest) in the last 18 months at Lyon, but that’s still an incredible coup for Frankfurt.
• Kicker is reporting that Hoffenheim’s rich backer, Dietmar Hopp, is looking to give his share of the club back to the fans and return Hoffenheim to the typical 50+1 ownership structure that we see in German football.

The Daily Buzz

What sports team is your regular reminder that everything is bad and that you should cherish the rare occasions where that is not the case?