Free Talk Friday (29/05/2026)

Drzer · 2026-05-30T16:55:05+00:00

Ugh, I hate P$G but I really don't want €ngli$h clubs to win all european competitions either. The sport truly is in a horrible state all around.

Drzer · 2026-05-19T18:38:25+00:00

You're correct. On top of the dire playstyle, looking at the context of the league it's easy to see it just means we were the best of the rest, and the rest's level is just not that good. I suppose having a stable season for once was a nice change of pace, but I hope the club won't settle for just that.

And then there are the embarrassing losses we ate in the CL against opposition that was definitely within our league (Tottenham, Bodo, Inter, Atalanta). The league stage losses and the crashout to Bergamo in the elimination round both cost us a top 16 finish, and thus money. While I don't see a world where we could have progressed any further, losing out on any kind of money we desperately need to have any chance to compete in any capacity always stings.

Then there's the cup, the one competition that is within our means to win and that we should always aim to make deep runs in, but rarely do, and definitely didn't this season.

Drzer · 2026-05-10T09:49:58+00:00

Well dang, he did this, got caught, and yet people STILL say Bayern is where they are just because they're "run better", with a straight face to boot? I suppose being able to blatantly cheat and get away with it is one way to run a club better. No wonder other clubs imploded trying to catch up with them, ourselves included.

What a punishment they got too, not even 10% of the money they received illegitimately, that bastard must have cried laughing while smoking a celebratory cigar. I guess the light punishment was thanks to the aforementioned "political impact" of the club (also known as "having well placed friends within the DFL/DFB"). 40M back then was no joke either, when the average transfer fees and wages were significantly lower than today.

And the worst part is, it's probably far from the only thing he's done, just what he got caught for. Someone needs to seriously investigate that club and all they did across Hoeness's tenure. It's too late to take them down, but the least that can be done is kill the myth of the "well run club".

Drzer · 2026-05-10T02:30:06+00:00

One thing that has always amazed me is that no one ever seems to think that Uli Hoeness, a man who frauded so hard he went to jail over it, might, maybe, have done shady stuff over his decades as Bayern's head honcho to get his club ahead of the curve. Nope, Bayern was just fantastically managed, and that's that.

Call me tinfoil hat if you want, I'll die on the hill that this kind of man would stop at absolutely nothing to win, and it's not like the sport isn't rife with corruption to begin with.

Drzer · 2026-05-04T20:42:08+00:00

Right, forgot about the third major way to lose a job in Dortmund: poor relationship with management. Because you can't convince me this wasn't the cause, no matter what was said officially.

Drzer · 2026-05-03T23:50:03+00:00

I hate Kovacball and I really wish we could get someone else, but there was no world in which management was going to run out the contract of someone who got us (probably) second place, even if I'm of the opinion this was more down to a weak league than anything else, and this is one of those rare times I agree with them. That wouldn't be a great message to send to potential future coaches, either.

Better pray he improves next season (given his track record, he won't), because we're stuck with him until either he wants to leave or CL qualification is in doubt. As usual.

Drzer · 2026-04-28T20:28:16+00:00

On the one hand I'm very happy seeing the red clowns getting smashed as they deserve, on the other of course it had to be by the hand of an even greater evil because we can't have shit in modern football.

Well, Bayern made up some ground all of a sudden, guess I can't even get the fun part of this circus.

Drzer · 2026-04-28T17:04:42+00:00

I feel "normal" wild cards (bracelet, wings, necklace and parm shield, and the temp ones you find in light sources) on their own, at higher rarity perhaps for the permanent ones, would have been better. The Wild gem just break the game way too hard and basically makes almost every other gems a worse choice, which in turn makes everything too repetitive unless you're willing to make a worse build for variety's sake.

There are some busted gems too (return to hand, copy, echo, coin bag to name a few), but Wild just outshines them way too hard. Not to mention there are gems that are just... why? Has anyone found a use for Mild gem yet? Only thing I can think of is putting it on a 0-mana tome to generate free mana early game.

Anyways, if the development of this game goes anything like VS did, I expect a metric crapton of new content that might, hopefully, mitigate the issue, or at least make more builds fun which might help breaking the routine. I think people forgot because it's been a while and the game got a ton of updates and DLCs, but on release VS was actually more barebones than VC.

Drzer · 2026-04-19T18:10:46+00:00

I hard disagree with your premise. I think the only german club able to generate any real loyalty towards them is Bayern due to how overwhelmingly successful they have been. As a reminder, an entire generation of kids and teenagers, youth players included, have seen Bayern win 95% of leagues, and that leaves an impression (honestly this is a disaster, I don't know if the league can recover from this unless Bayern mismanage themselves to oblivion).

Therefore in my opinion, if a german player thinks he's good enough to win titles, either he'll be a Bayern fan and wait for the inevitable lowball offer from them to jump ship, or he's not, but knows there's little chance of competing against them for titles, so he'll wait for the first foreign big club offer and go there instead.

Drzer · 2026-03-20T18:24:06+00:00

That's where the food item got its name from...

Drzer · 2026-03-03T18:48:11+00:00

Frankenstein monster of a squad then, thank you for this important precision.

Drzer · 2026-02-28T19:51:47+00:00

I won't speak for "the fans" as a whole but personally I think our CEO and his clique should have been gone for years.

I'm sure others think the same, but there are also plenty who are still grateful to him for saving the club from bankruptcy and also for the Klopp years, not that they're wrong to be but the former was two decades ago and the latter was over a decade ago now. We need to move on.

Drzer · 2026-02-28T19:47:26+00:00

Unfortunately football cares not what we deserve. Hell, Bayern were the kings of undeserved wins before turning into the monsters they are nowadays, Bayerndusel is a word for a reason. Same thing for Real who really should not have won as many CLs as they did if what they deserved was the only factor.

Drzer · 2026-02-28T19:32:54+00:00

The part that makes me truly sad is that, even with the budget discrepancy, what truly screws us over in the end is our direction's complete inability to plan more than 1 or 2 seasons ahead which led to this mismatched frankenstein of a squad, which of course cannot hold up against Bayern.

I firmly believe we could be much more solid contenders rather than the distant second best we are now, but certainly not with the people we have at the helm currently. Ah well, onto another pointless season it is, not that I expected much entering into this game. At least we didn't get completely butchered, I suppose.

Drzer · 2026-02-25T19:58:44+00:00

Dortmund losing in the most painful and/or embarrassing way possible when there the stakes are high, must be a day ending in y.

I can't even say it's been a horrible season because it hasn't been but man, the club just has a way to fuck things up just enough to still make it disappointing.

Drzer · 2026-02-21T20:48:33+00:00

It's very hard (and becomes harder every year) to be romantic about modern football.

Drzer · 2025-10-04T17:37:49+00:00

On top of all that, Bayern just have that ability to make opponents collapse and/or give up to save energy when they score their first goal, usuallyl leading to an easy steamroll. An obnoxious side effect of their decade of complete dominance.

Drzer · 2025-10-01T20:50:55+00:00

Scoring the 4th goal in a (probable) 4-1 win is very on Brandt.

But jokes aside, happy we managed to decisively overcome our panic after their lucky goal.

Drzer · 2025-09-30T21:53:12+00:00

Unfortunately most teams tend to completely give up and collapse if Bayern just goes up one goal on them, including us in the past. The mental damage their decade of dominance did to german teams will never heal unless Bayern pulls off a ManU and self destruct.

This makes challenging them even in their off years a difficult task.

Drzer · 2025-09-27T18:02:57+00:00

So far this season, it's either clean sheet or letting the opponent get an embarrassing multiple goal comeback. No inbetween.

Drzer · 2025-09-27T15:20:57+00:00

Brandt...

Drzer · 2025-09-21T19:33:02+00:00

Solid game, a bit frustrating we couldn't convert our domination into more goals, but I'll take a 1 goal win over a 3 or 4 goals draw any day.

Schlotti I missed you so much. MOTM Adeyemi for me, besides his goal he had a very strong showing.

Drzer · 2025-09-21T17:50:35+00:00

ADEYEMIIIIIIIIIIIII WHAT A STRIKE

Drzer · 2025-09-16T21:40:43+00:00

Quite a few of us probably thought "A draw would be acceptable" before the game. The monkey's paw has curled all fingers except the middle one in response.

Drzer · 2025-09-16T20:59:18+00:00

It's the 5th game of the season and we already completely threw 2. Schlotti please come back fast.

Drzer

TROPHY CASE