Are Your Ready for the German Champions League Final?

Millions of people will watch Bayern Munich (Munich) play Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League final tonight, will you be one of them? After 124 games with 365 goals scored, we're down to this game (figures from Wikipedia). This is a unique match up and the first time that it has been an all German Champions League final. Bayern and Dortmund are two of the top teams in the German Bundesliga, hard core and casual fans alike will be ready for these two rivals to play in this huge game.

Bayern has one of the biggest and best known soccer clubs in the world. They're the biggest and best known sports club in Germany, and 4th biggest soccer club in the world generating 368.4 million Euros in 2012 (Wikipedia). To me they're like the New York Yankees of soccer, having won 23 national tittles, winning the Champions League in 1974, 1975, 1976, and 2001; while being the runner up in 1982, 1987, 1999, 2010, 2012. They might not always win but you can't afford to overlook them.

Dortmund has developed into quite a rival for Bayern.  They won the Champions League in 1997.  Dortmund has had their ups and down and even almost went bankrupt.  Jürgen Klopp has lifted Dortmund out one of their low periods winning the Bundesliga in the 2010-11 and 2011-2012 seasons. 


Living in the Rhein-Main Area, I started following Jürgen Kloppwhen he was the coach at Mainz 05 and was impressed that he was able to led that club from the second Bundesliga to the first. I also liked watching him when he was part of the soccer coverage on German television.  It was lot of fun seeing him lead Dortmund to their two recent Bundesliga tittles.

I've seen that Jürgen Klopp has given some interesting interviews lately and I decided that I wanted to find out what was said. Since the game tonight is being held in Wembley Stadium in London, there are interviews that are done in English and non-native English speakers this provides the opportunity for lots of lost in translation  moments or translations problems.  In fact there was a Jame Bond quote that really piqued my interest.  Jurgen Klopp said in an interview at the Guardian in response to the possiblity of Robert Lewandowski will likely be leaving Dortmund (with a good possiblity of ending up at Bayern), "What can I say? If that's what Bayern wants … It's like James Bond – except they are the other guy [the villain]." 

Jürgen Klopp told the Guardian about the deep pockets of Bayern and their ability to spend large amounts of money on players that   "Bayern want a decade of success like Barça. That's OK if you have the money because it increases the possibility of success. But it's not guaranteed. We are not a supermarket but they want our players because they know we cannot pay them the same money. It could not be our way to do things like Real and Bayern and not think about taxes – and let the next generation pick up our problems. We need to work seriously and sensibly. We have this amount of money so we can pay that amount. But we lose players. Last year it was Shinji Kagawa." While he probably didn't mean that teams that don't have an endless supply of money to spend on players might not be woried about taxes but that most teams don't have the financail resources to complete with Bayern, Mancherster United, Real Madrid, and so on.  This is certainly a challenges for many teams in many diferent sports.

I can't really say that I was surprised, but I learned that Jürgen Klopp was recruited by both Bayern and Hamburg while he was at Mainz 05, before he ended up going to Dortmund. He said of the experience of being consided for the job at Bayern that "It wasn't too disappointing --for a second division manager to be called by Bayern is not the worst thing in the world"  I'm sure that Dortmund fans are glad that he ended up where he did.

Over the years I've liked it when cross town rivals met in various championship games, this makes the event special and stand out more.  In baseball I remember when the New York Mets played the New York Yankees and when the Oakland A's played the San Francisco Giants in the World Series, so it is exciting to see two German teams playing in the Champions League final.  

 Jürgen Klopp said "We are a club, not a company..but it depends on which kind of story the neutral fan wants to hear. If he respects the story of Bayern, and how much they have won since the 1970s, he can support them. But if he wants the new story, the special story, it must be Dortmund. I think, in this moment in the football world, you have to be on our side." I'll be pulling for Dortmund, how about you?

Here is a infographic that you might find interesting....

Photo credits: I combined the logos from the clubs based on logos at Wikipedia (Bayern and Dortmund).  The infographic comes from here.

Good Bye Roger Ebert!

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I was deeply saddened to read that Roger Ebert passed away.  For me Rogert Ebert will always be half of the movie critic duo of Siskel and Ebert (they are pictured together at the top of this post). I used to watch their weekly movie review show to see what they thought of the new movies and often used their reviews in deciding if I wanted to go see a movie or not (like lots of other people I might add).  Their show was a big part of my life.

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I think what originally drew me in was my love for movies.  I've often thought that it would be great to be able to make a living by being a film critic, so it is only natural that I would enjoy watching these two do their show.  For me Roger seemed more down to earth that Gene.  Gene often appeared very snobbish for my taste, but the two of them together did what I thought movie critcs should do.  They told us what they thought of the movies they reviewed and between the two of them you could get a good idea of if a movie was worth seeing.

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Time when by and Gene Siskel died and he was replaced by another film critic. I had stopped watching the show at this point and not long afterwards I moved to Germany so I wasn't aware of all that Roger Ebert with through in the past decade, so I was really surprised when I read the accounts of Roger Ebert after he died!  He had quite a battle with cancer and as a result part of his jaw was removed and long story short he lost the ability to eat, drink, and speak and even needed a feed tube at one point. He turned to a series of computer voices in order to speak, this eventually included a copy of his own voice derived from his own DVD commentaries! The picture above is a caricature of Roger Ebert drawn sometime after the problems with his throat.

I was surprised to learn that Roger Ebert was largely responsible for convincing Oprah Winfrey to sysndicate  her show, would Oprah have been nearly as popular if she hadn't listened to his suggesion to go into syndication? Good Morning American had a nice interview with Chaz Ebert, Roger's wife, there is a video in the article but I'm not able to view it from Germany.  It sounds like they had quite a life together.    

Even though his show didn't hold the same priority and place in my heart as it did when I was younger, I really miss the show that he and Siskel used to do. I admire his attempts to continue and carry on after his health initially became an issue.  I wonder what it must have been like to fight the battle he fought with his voice. Losing his partner to cancer earlier, I'm sure that he often had doubts if he would be able to keep fighting. I wonder how many movie critic were influenced by Siskel and Ebert? Whenever I think of thumbs up, I'll always think of you and Gene Siskel. I hope that you get to meet all the stars that passed away before you. Imagine the movies they could be making now.


Photo credits: "Siskel & Ebert" picture from Roger Ebert's timeline on Facebook. Roger Ebert giving Thumbs up picture courtesy of the IMDb. The caricature of Roger Ebert is from kaganmcleod.com. All of the pictures above have been re-pinned to my Gone But Not Forgotten board on Pinterest.

 You might want to also want to check out...

• The ABC story about Roger Ebert
• Roger Ebert Through the Years (a nice slide presentation showing him through the years).
• Wikipedia Entry on Roger Ebert
• Wikipedia Entry on Gene Siskel
• Roger Ebert Defends 'Star Wars' (Roger and Gene face-off on Night-Line against a critic that is definitely not a Star Wars fan).

Hello Pope Francis!

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Goodbye Cardinal Bergoglio, Hello Pope Francis! The world welcomes you open arms as the new pope. You are taking leadership of the Catholic world at a time of great turmoil and challenge.  You have a honeymoon phase with your new position where the world is waiting to learn about you and people are willing to listen to what you have to say and hear you out.  There is a new hope with a new pope and we all are crossing our fingers that you'll be able to live up to our expectations and help to lead us forward.

I truly hope that you're able to bring the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and all the religions of the world together, and that you'll be able to find some common ground by which you can build an effective coalition of the world's religious peoples.  There is so much division in the religious worlds at the moment and we desperately need to find a common ground, to find new ways to work together, and to lift each other up.  As the Pope, you have some influence here, I hope that you'll use it to these means.. 

I hope that you're able to get the atheists and agnostics of the world to join you on a different common ground.  That you can use the realization that we're all people and that our humanity should bind us together, to lift up our weaker brothers, sisters, and children that need our help.

I hope that you're able to bring together the states and nations of the world.  There are lots of politicians that have become corrupt over the years and are no longer looking after the needs of the people, they're only looking after the needs of special interests and those that are able to pay for their time and attention, or the various political systems have been broken and world leaders aree unable to manage in the mess we have today.  I hope that you're able to get warring parties to come to the table and negotiate, so that we can end all the useless bloodshed and conflict.

I hope that you're able to inspire and motivate the wealthy people and corporations of the world to realize that they have obligations to society and that life is not only about making money.  I hope that you're able to inspire them to feed the poor, to create lots of  jobs that pay a living wage so that employees can support their families and have a decent life.  I hope that you're able to convince the wealthy and the corporations that the world has limited resources that need to be shared equitably and that polluting and destroying our world for short-term profit is not in the best interest of the human and animal populations on our planet.

I hope that you're able to bring the Catholic church up to date while preserving the best of Catholic traditions and customs.  Please do a review of all major policies, and where the church needs to come out of the dark ages, shine your light and help them to move forward.  There are lots of Catholics who really want to be a part of the church again but many of the church's dogma, teachings, and policies are out dated, and they exclude many who would like to be a part of the church. 

I hope that you're able to lift the poor out of poverty, that you're able to help them break the cycle of poverty that only seems to pull in more and more people. I hope that you're able to inspire the uninspired to do wonderful things with their lives.

I hope that we're able to look back in 5 or 10 years and see your time as Pope as a real breakthrough, one that the world has been waiting for. I wish you all the best.

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