Asianess

After the dowdy draw againt China on Friday, Germany defeated the UAE 7-2 in Dubai on their second and last stop of the Asia trip on Tuesday. As suspected, it was a better training game, the only notable aspects were Schalke’s Manuel Neuer who debuted in the German goal and showed a strong and solid effort. The other thing was the four goals by Mario Gomez who somehow hadn’t scored in 15 consecutive caps while showing his goalgetter face only in the Bundesliga. A big relief for him, indeed.

Anyway, the point of the whole two game Asia trip was to put a German foot in the Asian market, believing that they have money left to burn. While all other big European leagues have multi-million-Euro deals with media corporations, the Germans hobble after them being three to four years behind as usual. But travelling with what has to be a better reserve squad to Asia, this goal was not going to be accomplished. And rightly so! Of course, many players couldn’t make the trip because they had to play in several cup finals or had other commitments but the atmosphere before and the arguments about the needlessness of this trip were nothing but an impolite slap in the face of Asian football fans. Therefore only a few fans managed to come to the games as Germany played in front of 7000 fans in Dubai.

The German football federation DFB should have sold the trip as what it was. A Thank You for the four Asian FIFA votes in order to get the 2006 World Cup to Germany. But it’s not really the proper way to thank someone with a lethargic and spiritless performance of a B-squad not to mention to earn any Asian money in the future. You still recognize the old and grey scabs in the managements of the DFB and the Bundesliga.