Text: Ralf Klemm

Zero Is Round

Zero is almost a well-rounded thing. In football, heroes such as Rudi Gutendorf – who led Meidericher SV to second place in the Bundesliga – already knew that; Klaus Schlappner, too, was electrified by the fascination of zero and almost took SV Waldhof into the UEFA Cup. Zero was then philosophically ennobled by Huub Stevens and his “Euro Fighters”. So zero couldn’t really be such a bad plan for our visit to our Lithuanian friends in Druskininkai this year – and, to be honest, the plan fully matched our footballing abilities: defend “roundly” at the back, and up front our football gods Boris and Sebastian would help. The reality of the tournament turned out to be rather alarming: 11 teams, everyone against everyone, more than four hours of largely relentless defensive battle with just two short breaks. But after swearing ourselves in once more to our underdog status, things got going. At times “cramp”-ingly, we hurled our body mass again and again into the opponents’ attacking efforts. The reward: in four of ten matches we held out for 0–0, in no match did we concede more than one goal, our goal difference of 6:5 was defensively better than that of the tournament winners, and in our highlight match against Ukraine our uncharacteristically attacking football gods Boris and Sebastian turned a deficit into a 3–1 win. If defence wins championships, we would have deserved to win the tournament – reality, however, placed us only eighth. As a small consolation, Fred was at least named best keeper of the tournament for his spectacular saves. So almost a “well-rounded” affair after all. It was crowned at the joint closing banquet, when the roast deer

The traditional roast deer in Lithuania.

turned on the grill. Here the previously rather cumbersome tournament format (everyone against everyone) showed its best side. You had already shaken hands with every opponent on the pitch and come more or less painfully close to every one of them in a tackle. Over venison and lager, good conversations quickly started, and once again, as almost always, it proved true that only a good “third half” really rounds off our trips – regardless of whether our performance on the pitch had also gone “roundly”.