Ka-pi96 said:
Woah! Harsh words there! Are they really that bad? I mean, if they do well enough to avoid relegation then they can't be too bad right? |
There are 4 traditional Bundesliga clubs which are so self-opiniated at times that it seems like arrogance: Bayern, Schalke, Köln and Hamburg. The latter three are not really in the position to be as self-opiniated as they are. They still rely on their fame from the past (HSV was a big player in the 1980s, Köln in the 70s, Schalke in the, well, ... 50s [before Bundesliga was founded]). Köln got relegated a few years ago, reconstructed a lot of things, returned to first league and do a pretty good job now. Schalke are often in the top 3 to 7 and not a bad club per se, but their main problem is that they see themselves on par with Bayern (sometimes) or at least Dortmund, Wolfsburg, Gladbach, Leverkusen (always), which they aren't imo - just watch them lose 0-6 to Real in a few days and get humbled internationally yet again. And next week they will play -say- 1-1 against Bremen and think they're the secret kings of the Bundesliga again...
HSV is a different beast. They are (lovingly) called the dinosaur of the Bundesliga, because they are the only founding member of the league that never has been relegated. They are among the worst when it comes to youth education, to name one of their biggest problems. Rafael van der Vaart and HSV's reliance on seemingly big names another one. They never really change anything despite firing coach and manager twice a season, for a few years now they've been playing worse than some of our 2nd league teams imo, but somehow they managed to not get relegated until now. Once we liked our Bundesliga dinosaur, but some day we realized that he's actually as slow as a dinosaur. HSV is currently the German team that needs to get relegated most quickly and badly. This will be the only way for them to learn that there are many things to be changed within the club (Köln and Frankfurt were the two last traditional teams which had to learn it the hard way, Bremen as a counter-example is a clever club which often analyze their own mistakes and managed yet again this season to make the necessary changes on their own). I don't hate HSV by the way, I just can't take them seriously anymore.
