DFB-Pokal: Werder Squeak by St. Pauli

By: Jamie | September 23rd, 2009

Well, typical Werder were back today – for better or worse, narrowly beating St. Pauli 2-1. But at least the Green-Whites came away with the win, considering how many HUGE upsets there were in the Pokal today! Hamburg, Wolfsburg, Leverkusen, Hertha? Wow.

Observations:

1. Did someone wake Torsten up in the middle of his nap to play the game? In the first half at least, he seemed to prefer ball-watching rather than doing something constructive with the ball. But he was not the only one guilty of particularly bad passing, but I did notice quite a few of his passes in particular go awry.

2. CalamiTim. Oh dear. Way to just stand and watch the ball, dear (see? ball-watching again). Was he wrong-footed? I guess he just thought it was going out but he still should have been there to make sure. Maybe I’m just being hard on him, but I think it was a preventable goal. Ah, Werder defense. Always making it harder than it has to be.

3. I really wanted Rosenberg to get a goal. I’ve talked about him a lot, I know. I think it’s because he’s Swedish. My grandma’s family is Swedish. So obviously we are kindred spirits, me and Markus. It was nice to see him get a start, along with Moreno, while Pizarro was rested on the bench. Moreno seemed to work hard but his crossing still needs a bit of work.

4. Aaron Hunt and his serial killer-esque beard scored a sweet goal. I was worried Moreno would keep going for the ball, but fortunately he left it for Hunt to blast into the net.

5. Our makeshift striker Naldo strikes again! Unfortunately I was left a bit in suspense for the last 10 minutes of the match when my stream (as usual, I was hardly surprised) died. And big Per had the assist! See, our giants in center defense can also function as the 2 strikers up front!

I could not figure out how to embed, but see the three goals here. I am off to watch highlights of the other matches cos really I’m just still shocked. The Pokal is such a great competition.

So the Green-Whites survive another day to defend their trophy while chaos reigns elsewhere (well, except in Munich)! And at least we scored a couple goals this time… not quite to the extent of the goalfest that was the Eintracht Frankfurt match, but we’ll take it!