Marked for Yannick Michaelis
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad1 Mar 2038
A knee injury of the worst kind for Dominik Schäfer
43 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Borussia Mönchengladbach lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match1 Mar 2038
61 points on the board and a place in the leading group. Nobody at the ground is saying the word out loud yet.
Player ratings1 Mar 2038
Age has not caught Giovanni Reyna yet — 9.24
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 9.24 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Squad1 Mar 2038
529 appearances across 12 seasons in these colours. Careers like that are not built any more, and Borussia Mönchengladbach know what they have.
Squad1 Mar 2038
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad1 Mar 2038
Giovanni Reyna was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Market1 Mar 2038
Bryan Gil wants to know where this is going
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Borussia Mönchengladbach hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Player ratings1 Mar 2038
Fabio Chiarodia was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.90. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match24 Jan 2037
A derby is never about the football alone, but the football helped: 6‑2, and the away end emptied early. Bragging rights renewed for another season.
Squad26 Jan 2037
Wael Mohya is in the form of his life
A season average of 8.00 with 22 goals behind it. Opponents have started planning around him, which is the sincerest compliment football pays.
Match26 Jan 2037
Position 1 and 54 points on the board. Nobody at the ground will say the word out loud yet, and everybody at the ground is thinking it.
Squad26 Jan 2037
A fracture rules Markus Scholz out for 54 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Borussia Mönchengladbach will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings26 Jan 2037
Beat anybody else and it is three points. Beat them and it is a story a city tells for a decade. Borussia Mönchengladbach have their man.
Squad26 Jan 2037
The match ball belongs to Wael Mohya, whose 3 goals turned a difficult afternoon into a procession.
Squad26 Jan 2037
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Market26 Jan 2037
Only the photograph left for Jan Krüger
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Jan Krüger will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Borussia Mönchengladbach the goodbyes have quietly begun.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match6 Dec 2036
14 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Player ratings8 Dec 2036
At 36 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 9.22 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Market8 Dec 2036
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Borussia Mönchengladbach can pretend not to have heard.
Squad8 Dec 2036
378 appearances across 13 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
Market8 Dec 2036
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Squad8 Dec 2036
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Player ratings8 Dec 2036
26 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Squad8 Dec 2036
Giovanni Reyna was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.