Like all Bundesliga clubs, Mönchengladbach is also alienated from the World Cup in Qatar. On closer inspection, however, the "Elf vom Niederrhein" should benefit from the winter tournament: After two bad years, Borussia must also slowly deliver.
Less than two years ago, the Borussia Mönchengladbach players hung over a tablet in a deserted stadium in Madrid and watched the final minutes of the Champions League game between Inter Milan and Shakhtar Donetsk. At the final whistle - the game ended 0-0 - there was no stopping the Gladbachers. Thanks to the draw in the parallel game, Borussia made it through to the round of 16 in the premier football league despite their own 2-0 defeat against Real Madrid. Borussia Mönchengladbach among the top 16 teams in Europe. Two years later, that sounds even more surreal than it did back then.
At the end of October 2022, there is nothing left of the glory of that time, and even less of the makers of that success. Coach Marco Rose? Announced his move to Borussia Dortmund in February 2021 in order to win one of many more or less meaningless runners-up championships there. Manager Max Eberl? Resigned from his post in January 2022 due to exhaustion, only to join RB Leipzig eight months later.
First of all: Not everything has gone badly at Borussia Mönchengladbach in the past two years. Marco Rose was replaced via the detour of Adi Hütter with Daniel Farke, who is extremely well received by those responsible and fans in Gladbach and already enjoys a high reputation after 13 competitive games. And after three derby defeats in a row, 1. FC Köln were "screwed out of the stadium" 5-2 at the beginning of October, as Farke aptly put it.
Despite the pandemic and empty stadiums, Borussia’s situation was much better in the first Corona winter than it was two years later. Manchester City were drawn as opponents in the league on course for the European Cup, in the DFB Cup in the quarter-finals and for the Champions League round of 16. Golden times that are now gray.
The disaster began with Marco Rose's change announcement, who then lost the support of the fans and parts of the team and crashed to eighth place with them. Also because Max Eberl stuck to the trainer at the time. The next coaching decision by Eberl, who has been untouchable for a long time, will also be a non-starter. With Adi Hütter on the coaching bench, Borussia, which is peppered with top international players, is even briefly in danger of relegation in the 2021/2022 season.
When Borussia ends the season at least forgivingly, Eberl is no longer there. His successor Roland Virkus, previously junior boss, initially has a difficult time, but can swim free in the summer of 2022. Virkus reacted to the last-minute cancellation of coaching candidate Lucien Favre with Daniel Farke, who shook up a starving club in his initial press conference.
Towards the end of the summer transfer period, manager Virkus felt how quickly near-death experiences and mad homage in football go together when he surprisingly succeeded in extending the expiring contracts of national players Jonas Hofmann and Alassane Pléa and loaning Julian Weigl from Benfica Lisbon . In parts of the Gladbach fans, Virkus has gone from being the hard-critic “third choice” to managerial post to “Don Rollo”.
Borussia also manages to start the season. 12 points after seven games. But then the team at Werder Bremen experienced a relapse into Hütter times that they thought had been forgotten. Gladbach can be beaten 1: 5 in the Weser Stadium. Only to appease the fans with a derby victory a week later: 5:2 against the unloved rival from Cologne. But Konstanz does not get Gladbach in his performances. A lucky draw in Wolfsburg follows, the cup-out in Darmstadt and a 1:3 home defeat against Frankfurt.
After eleven match days, Borussia is ninth. Nothing to worry about, but also no reason for excessive euphoria. While some fans struggle with a number of sleepy early stages or criticize mentality problems in part of the team, others feel lulled by Farke's possession football. Still others see the Gladbach coach as an era-defining world-class coach after just eleven games, who kisses the whole club awake. The “Farke-Ball”, which sets itself apart from the physical transition football of most Bundesliga competitors, is downright enthusiastic. Shades of grey? Even on the often dreary Lower Rhine, there are currently hardly any.
At the same time, the chances of building something up calmly and with concentration over as long a period of time as possible are better at no other traditional Bundesliga club than in Mönchengladbach. The club's management is not known for exchanging coaches or sports directors in a fast-track procedure. Compared to locations such as Cologne, Hamburg or Munich, the media environment is almost heavenly relaxed because it is mostly fair and rarely populist.
Mönchengladbach is pretty much the opposite of a vibrant melting pot. Viewed negatively, this can quickly come across as provincial and stuffy. The Presidium works so silently that you hardly notice it. In a league comparison, as a result of the successful era in the 1970s, Borussia has the oldest fans on average, who follow Gladbach in large numbers, but sometimes not as loudly as other fan scenes, apart from the much younger Ultra movement. In addition, sports director Virkus still has the reputation of sometimes getting unprofessional and wooden out of his skin when he doesn't like an (actually unspectacular) question. In any case, Virkus is not a communications professional. Some suspect that the 55-year-old, unlike his predecessor Eberl, does not take part in every press conference.
Like this week in the media round before Borussia's away game at Union Berlin (3:30 p.m. / DAZN and in the live ticker on ntv.de). An integral part of Gladbach press conferences is the presentation of a long list of injuries week after week: With Ko Itakura, Florian Neuhaus, Jonas Hofmann and goalkeeper Yann Sommer, key players are sometimes absent for months. The Borussia Mönchengladbach bench sometimes looks like the starting XI of the second team in the Regionalliga West against Straelen, Düren or Kaan-Marienborn.
The "foals" could have one of the best teams in the Bundesliga with the best line-up, but a few absentees (Union also has Koné yellow-banned) cause a glaring problem with the depth of the squad. While clubs like Union Berlin, Mainz 05 and SC Freiburg have harmonized their squads to such an extent that 18 players can easily be considered for a starting XI in every game, Gladbach can mostly only rely on youth players who "can be happy to be in the second division at some point To be a professional", as the "Rheinische Post" recently analyzed harshly but aptly.
This circumstance means that, statistically speaking, Daniel Farke is the last person to make the change compared to his fellow coaches. Club legend Patrick Herrmann, in his role as a record substitute, has managed the feat of distributing 35 minutes over nine (!) games this season.
The lack of squad depth means that the Winter World Cup plays into the Gladbachers' cards. Players like Itakura, Neuhaus and Wolf have a good chance of being back on board when league operations resume in 2023. Manager Virkus will also have to use the long winter break to set the right course for next year's squad in coordination with scouting boss Steffen Korell.
It would be necessary in anticipation of another complicated transfer summer. The contracts of the top performers Sommer, Bensebaini, Thuram, Stindl and Kramer expire in the summer of 2023. While Stindl is still hesitating whether he wants to continue his career, according to his own statement, talks with Kramer are "on the home straight". Summer has been optimistic for months, but there is no report of completion. It is quite possible that the Swiss national keeper is waiting for the World Cup and is still considering an offer from a top European club. Bensebaini and Thuram, on the other hand, are about to jump in the summer. According to Farke, a winter change is not an issue. "The boys have valid contracts. We are happy that the players will definitely fulfill them."
From an economic point of view, Borussia cannot say "no" in all cases. If an immoral offer lands in the mailbox for the players after the World Cup, Gladbach will have to deal with it in order to avoid the “Ginter scenario”: a free transfer in the summer.
If you look at the market values of the transfer candidates, Gladbach is threatened with a financial fiasco: If Bensebaini and Thuram leave the club in the summer, everything indicates that Borussia will lose an estimated 37 million euros market value (source: transfermarkt.de). If you add the 18 million market value loss due to the change of Matthias Ginter in the summer of this year, this underlines the complicated situation.
The club management of Borussia Mönchengladbach describes the current season as a transitional season. Between the lines, however, one hears clearer goals: internally, the team has made a return to international business. Florian Neuhaus, among others, indirectly pointed this out in the “Sky” interview. If Borussia clinches two more wins in the last four games of the year and uses the Winter World Cup in Qatar to strengthen the squad, then a transitional season in Optimal could even lead to Europe.
