Bundesliga findings: Stindl belongs to the national team

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Gladbach's captain Lars Stindl

Photo: 

Ulrich Hufnagel / imago images / Ulrich Hufnagel

1. Bring Lars Stindl back, Mr. Löw!

The next international matches for the German national team are not due until March.

This is good for national coach Joachim Löw insofar as he rarely has to comment in everyday life to come to terms with the 6-0 slap against Spain in November.

And the question of whether Mats Hummels or Thomas Müller should return to the DFB team's squad is currently only being discussed in passing - that will change again in March.

But what about players like Marco Reus, Max Kruse or Lars Stindl?

This trio, all three of them over 30 years old, has neither resigned nor was it sorted out by the national coach in a media-effective manner.

There is no inhibition threshold of having to admit mistakes in the event of a return campaign.

Now Kruse has been injured for a longer period of time and Reus indicated at the weekend in the 3-1 win of his BVB in Leipzig for the first time this season that he is still able to kick at the highest level after his many injury breaks.

With Löw it was always on the slip.

It's different with Lars Stindl.

The captain of Borussia Mönchengladbach is playing an outstanding season.

He has 19 goals in 23 competitive games.

In the 3-2 win of his Borussia in the top game against FC Bayern, Stindl showed how well he would fit into the planned system of the national team.

Löw wants to switch faster, appear less dominant and use the speed of his strikers Leroy Sané, Timo Werner and Serge Gnabry.

In its current form, Stindl is the ideal passport for these players.

The 32-year-old prepared Jonas Hofmann's two goals with two passes that only few Bundesliga professionals can play: in distress, without time, with the ideal length and accuracy.

So far, Stindl has made eleven international matches, he is the 2017 Confederation Cup winner, and his last appearance in the DFB team was in 2018 in the run-up to the World Cup when he lost 1-0 to Brazil.

For Löw, it cannot be a question of testing more newcomers or talents before the EM 2021.

He needs playful quality, experience and a goal risk - Lars Stindl brings all of that with him.

2. Amine Harit is Schalke's key to staying up

The coming weeks will show whether the 4-0 victory of FC Schalke against TSG Hoffenheim was a kind of liberation, or whether the uncertainty of 30 games without a win will return with the next setbacks.

The new coach Christian Gross made it clear after the success that he continues to hope for reinforcements.

This will primarily be decided by the financial situation of the indebted club.

Clemens Tönnies, the former chairman of the Schalke supervisory board, will - to the relief of many Schalke fans - not invest any more money in the club.

Player sales are needed for financing and even then it is questionable whether more players in the class of Sead Kolasinac will find their way to Gelsenkirchen in the winter.

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Amine Harit has fun again at Schalke

Photo: 

Lars Baron / Getty Images

The game against Hoffenheim showed that Gross already has an entry in his ranks that nobody at Schalke expected.

Amine Harit is the best footballer in the Schalke team.

It's no secret, it's just that his qualities were extinguished for an entire year.

It is not for nothing that Schalke's fans have a kind of love-hate relationship with Harit.

In 2018 he was involved in a fatal car accident in his native Morocco.

In the first half of 2019/2020, when Schalke was on the Champions League course under David Wagner, he was involved in ten goals.

Another assist followed in the twelve months that followed, a remarkable descent.

Harit became a follower, was injured in the meantime, and was suspended for disciplinary reasons.

Now he's back.

The 23-year-old prepared Matthew Hoppe's three goals with expansive steps and precise passes, and he scored the goal to make it 4-0 himself. Schalke's game has suffered from a lack of creativity and a lack of goal danger for years, Harit can change that.

He can -

Because the truth of this 4-0 also includes that hardly any other team will make it as easy for him as Hoffenheim did.

3. Delayed penalties are unfair

The probability of converting a penalty was around 75 percent in football before the corona pandemic.

From this point of view, the 15th matchday was a success for the penalty shooters, because this time the rate was 100 percent: Robert Lewandowski, Wout Weghorst, twice André Silva and Nicolás González safely converted their attempts.

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Robert Lewandowski delays his penalties so skillfully that the goalkeepers move and have no chance of a save

Photo: 

Moritz Mueller / imago images / Moritz Müller

There were clear differences in the execution of the penalties.

While Weghorst and Silva ran through in one movement and shot powerfully and flat into the corner, Lewandowski and González delayed the approach until Gladbach's goalkeeper Yann Sommer and Augsburg's keeper Rafal Gikiewicz had to decide on a corner.

If the shooters celebrate it as extensively as Lewandowski and González, goalkeepers ultimately have no chance of saving penalties.

Penalties are penalty kicks.

The penalty is given because there was an offense in the most dangerous zone.

Therefore, the shooters are favored, feinting is allowed by the rules, penalties are legitimately not called back.

The goalkeepers have even had one foot on the goal line since this season, which further reduces the chance of a save.

All of this is known, and in principle it is also correct.

Yet those delayed penalties are a nuisance.

You are unfair.

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