So, we didn’t train in our usual way today, instead we played a training match against our youth team (“A Jugend”). I wasn’t in the starting formation so some of my teammates and I played a little 3 on 3 match on another pitch until it was time for us to get some action. My action started around the 40th minute of the 60minute match. To my surprise we were already trailing 0-4! I got off to a good start and had some early touches and when it counted most I was where a striker should be – in the middle of the action.

Salvador Garcia-Martinez tried his luck with a 18meter shot, but the goalie got his hands to it…the ball went straight away from goal – this is when I started my little sprint to the ball to find myself alone infront of goal…and I just shot the ball with my right foot and it went sailing into the top right corner :-) FCM II 1-4 Youth team. Now we were back in the match and goals by Timo “Eugen” Striegel and Salvador Garcia-Martinez put us within reach at 3-4, but then the match ended. So we lost, but it was a good match and I had a good time :mrgreen:

Nice…after going ahead 1-0 early on with a wonderful free-kick by Fabian Kirschner (Beckham style over the defenders right in the left top corner) it was a tough match and Neckarrems had some decent chances to level things up at one a piece. Fortunately the didn’t use their chances and we were able to get the 2-o shortly before full time – Harald Ilg went one on one with the keeper and kept his cool to secure our victory.

So we stay in second place for now with 20 points, although both Neckargroeningen (1st, 21 points) and Oberstenfeld (3rd, 18 points) have one match more left to play…

The first bump in the road, so to speak. After being undefeated in the first 6 matches, we were finally defeated today. It seemed that our opponents were not really much better than we were, but they were motivated and wanted to win badly – and who can blame them, they were almost secured as champions last season before failing to claim the championship due to a draw in the last match of the season.

We’re still on top of the table (16points), but both Oberstenfeld (15 points) and Neckargroeningen (15 points and one game less played) are on our heels…

:lol:

What a match, after being down 1-0 and 2-1 we were able to level things up at two a piece, which was the result at halftime. After the break we stormed out to a 2-3, 2-4, 2-5, 2-6, 2-7 lead!!!

Then we let the game slip a little once again and they got two goals back 3-7 and 4-7 which is the final result. The crowd really got it’s money’s worth today and we retain first place :-)

Not a great match on the horrible pitch of Oberstenfeld, nontheless we had the better chances and could have scored numerous time, but it wasn’t to be.

So there goes the top of the table and we’re playing our next home game next sunday against the new leader:

FC Marbach II (2nd – 10pts) vs. SGV Hochdorf (1st – 12pts)

Well, what should I say…they had no chance at all. Our team, stuffed with players from our first team (6 out of the starting 11), was just too much and it was just a mattered of time until we scored – which took quite some time and a lot of wasted chances (43rd minute: 1-0). We went up 2-0 right after the half on a penalty and the rest was cruise mode.

• 1-0 Thomas Scheike
• 2-0 Fabian Kirschner (penalty)
• 3-0 Kerim Panzehir
• 4-0 Fabian Kirschner
• 5-0 Timo Hertler

If we continue at this pace we’ll be able to clinch the wanted 20+ points (avoiding relegation) in no time…and if all goes well we might even play for a bid in Kreisliga A…who knows…

Wow, another victory against a good team. After going up 0-2, Murr pull within our reach just before half-time (1-2). 1-3, 1-4 and 2-4 followed which leaves us with our second win in as many matches :mrgreen:

Scorers:

• 0-1 Salvador Garcia-Martinez
• 0-2 Kerim Panzehir
• 1-3 Timo Hertler
• 1-4 Kerim Panzehir

So…after a really short night and bad signs (a mate of mine celebrated his birthday and we were drinking beer + jaegermeister until well after 3am this morning – can you call that bad signs?! :mrgreen: ) I decided to…run!

To be honest the route was tougher than I expected and I thought about quitting after the first lap, but then I thought: You’re here now…so run! – and that’s just what I did…

I finished in position 258 (which in turn is place 218 (edit) only counting the male competitors)) – not bad! Although I didn’t finish in my “magic time” of under an hour…here’s the time:

1h 7m 58s: laps 20:04/23:40/24:14 – nontheless I’m proud and glad that it’s over ;-)
Maybe I’ll start again next year – but only if I can find the time to train a little bit more, especially on the route itself as there’s a huge difference between 10.5km flat and 10.5km of up and down (47 height meters per lap)!

On Saturday it’s time for the “Marbacher Gassenlauf” (Marbach is the native town of Friedrich Schiller). It’s basically a city run, although the route is through all the old alleys (“Gasse” = alley) with their lovely cobblestone pavement so it’s a little bit tougher – especially due to the nature of the route:

3 laps with 3.5km each, height difference per round = 47 meters :eek: – so a total height difference of 141 meters…

Here’s a pic of the route (the part in the red square is the cobblestone part):

I guess it’s going to be a tough one as I haven’t been in a 10km+ run before, but I’m feeling fine and confident…although I didn’t do any additional training sessions (training for footie at least two times per week is enough IMO).

My personal goals:

• Make it through all 3 laps
• Have fun! (If that’s possible ;-) )
• If it’s possible stay under 1h
• Don’t die of boredom

I’ll report back on late Saturday or Sunday with results…

Today was the start of the new football season. This year we’re in “Kreisliga B – Staffel 2” which is one league above the “Kreisliga C” in which we played last season. After a bumpy preparation period (lots of teammates were either on vacation or not really keen on doing all the conditioning and so we weren’t really able to train all the stuff you should train in a preparation period) and all the preseason losses (4 matches played, W-D-L=0-0-4) we weren’t too sure about how well we would fare against TuS Freiberg (who went through relegation from Kreisliga A last season).

How did we do then? FC Marbach II 5-0 TuS Freiberg :-)
After being up 3-0 at half time we missed numerous chances (including a penalty kick) in the second half and so the 5-0 could have been even higher.

Side note: Nope, I didn’t play as I handed in my resignation from active play after last season/prior to this season as I didn’t see a chance to get a decent amount of playing time. Nontheless I’m still training (I was the only one on the team to participate in all preseason training sessions) and I’m ready and willing to step up again if we’re short of players…

Alrighty, yesterday it was time for the Koelsch Cup again. Short description of the Koelsch Cup:

• A team consists of 2 players
• A match’s duration is 10minutes max – if a team scores 10 goals the match ends immediately
• The Koelsch Cup is the Koelsch Cup because (almost) everyone is drinking Koelsch…that said: most of the early matches are high-class, most of the later matches tend to be really funny with (almost) all players a little bit drunk ;-)
• The pitch is 15m x 8m with two little goals (see here)
• All matches are strictly fair play!
• The Cup is all private…

I had my fourth go at the cup this year and once again played with my partner Benjamin “Ailton” Keiper. This year 20 teams competed for the cup – the preliminary round was played in 4 groups (A-D) on two pitches (first time ever). We ended up in Group D and were able to watch some interesting matches before taking the field ourselves – we lost the first match 5-7 against our FCM II rear gunners “Buuunsch” and “L.Oe.”. We won our second match 9-2 after trailing 0-2 and at this point we were almost through to the final round (4 out 5 teams of every group play the 1/8 and so on) so we weren’t really focussed on winning anymore and lost the remaining two group matches. After that we played our 1/8-final (which we didn’t intend to win) and were able to watch the remaining matches without any hassle – drinking and eating without interruption :-)

Overall it was once again a really nice Cup so I decided it would be my turn to help out tearing down all the stuff…so it was a short night (in bed shortly after 2am, alarm went of at 9am)…but all in all it was worth it as we were able to get the stuff sorted quite quickly… :tup:

Hopefully there will be another Cup next year – this would be my 5 year anniversary :-)