Official gossip news thread

MUTU · Last edited by MUTU on Thu Apr 26, 2007 8:05 pm; edited 2 times in total

BERLIN, March 29 (Reuters) - A German civil servant has lost his job after helping cover up a speeding violation by soccer great Franz Beckenbauer, authorities said on Thursday.

A court in Munich rejected an appeal by the man to be re-instated as a senior traffic inspector. He and two officials in the local traffic police hatched a plan to allow Beckenbauer to avoid a one-month driving ban for speeding.

When Bayern Munich club president Beckenbauer was filmed driving around 40 km/h (25 mph) over the limit in the Bavarian capital in 2005, the trio attempted to pass his car off as an unmarked vehicle being used by traffic police. A city official uncovered the ruse when she recognised the speeding "policeman" behind the wheel as Beckenbauer, who would have faced a one-month ban if convicted.

"They were trying to stop a case being brought against Beckenbauer," said a spokesman for the court.

The two traffic police were subsequently fired. The senior inspector said he had been misled by one of the other men, but the court rejected the appeal and said the man was not fit to continue his job.

A spokesman for Munich city authorities said Beckenbauer, a World Cup winner as a coach and a player, would not face prosecution for the speeding offence because the statute of limitations now covered the incident.

Walls

The judge must have been a Schalke fan =P

fanOfBayern

Poor cop...
Beckenbauer will give him a million dollars ... Razz

...

MUTU

Schweinsteiger is piggy in middle of a sausage saga
Has Bastian Schweinsteiger taken the bratwurst in terms of player image rights with his recent court ruling?
Harry Pearson - March 30, 2007 12:00 AM

I'm sure my regular reader (Sorry I forgot Mother's Day, by the way. We've been terribly, terribly busy. I'll phone you on Sunday) is eager to hear my views on Steve McClaren and the Lampard-Gerrard debate but that will have to wait. As Bayern Munich's general manager, Uli Hoeness, once announced to a room full of journalists, "I am not here to talk about football, I am here to talk about sausages."

The cause for this gastronomic diversion is a court case involving one of Hoeness's employees at the Olympic Stadium, the German midfield ace Bastian Schweinsteiger. Bastian's surname means "pig climber". How the 22-year-old's ancestors came by this moniker I am not sure. Perhaps scaling pigs is a job in Germany. Maybe it was once a popular hobby. Or perhaps it was just an isolated incident culminating in the punch line, "But you clamber on one pig . . . "

Whatever, Bastian is not the first Bayern player with an unusual name. The club president Franz Beckenbauer's surname means "basin farmer". This conjures up a pleasant image of the Kaiser strolling through meadows filled with capering sinks. And when the flocks are safely in for the night, far from the eyes of predatory plumbers, returning to his farmhouse to discuss with his wife the possibility of diversifying into French bidets or getting an EU grant for raising rare-breed urinals.

Anyway, be that as it may or may not, Schweinsteiger's name is the root cause of the legal action. His nickname, you see, is "Schweini" and, when he found out that a meat product wholesaler from Aichach-Friedberg in Bavaria was selling Rostbratwurst under that name, he sought legal redress. Since these were pork sausages - Schweinswürstl - and "Schweini" means "Piggy", you might have thought the butcher would have had a case. Alas, as anyone with a bit of knowledge could have told the unfortunate Fleischhandler, away from the terraces, sport and sausages go together like, well, young Frank and the squeaky Scouser.

Whenever the two things meet the result is about as cheering as watching Iain Dowie chew a dung beetle. Ferenc Puskas's Castilian sausage factory went into receivership, for example, while Hoeness's own establishment was raided by police looking for illegal workers. Earlier this month the VIP area of the Stadion am Bieberer Berg, home of Kickers Offenbach, had to be evacuated after a police sniffer dog showed a less than professional interest in an unmarked package which turned out, under examination by bomb disposal experts, to contain a selection of prime wurst meant as a gift for the club president.

Twelve months ago we even heard the sad tale of the Romanian defender Marius Cioara, a man forced to abandon the game he loved for good because of the effect of sausages. Cioara, you may recall, was transferred from the Romanian second-flight club UT Arad to the fourth division outfit Regal Hornia for a fee of 15kg of prime pork links. Within a few days of the deal being done, however, he had packed his bags and fled the country. "The sausage taunts all got too much," he confessed. "They were making sausage jokes.

"They said I would have got more from the Germans. It was a huge insult. I have decided to go to Spain where I have got a job on a farm." Officials from Hornia were distraught. "Not only have we lost our sausages, we have also lost a footballer," the club president wailed.

And before that we had to endure the terrible incident of the assault on the Milwaukee Brewers' salami. This was not a real sausage, admittedly - it was a female Brewers employee dressed in a giant sausage costume as part of the baseball club's hugely popular interval sausage race - but it demonstrates my point. The race sees half-a-dozen similarly clad (a personal favourite is "El Picante", the 8ft-tall chorizo in the dashing sombrero) fans and employees scampering round the outfield and is regarded as the cultural highlight of any trip to Wisconsin.

On this occasion, for reasons only Sigmund Freud could explain, the sight of a young woman dressed as an Italian sausage running past him gave the Pittsburg Pirate Randall Simon a brainstorm and he clonked her over the head with his bat. The salami hit the ground, a lady dressed as a frankfurter tripped over her, a bratwurst sizzled down the final straight to victory and the police turned up and dragged Randall away in handcuffs, charged with misdemeanour assault. As his team-mate Reggie Sanders observed philosophically: "It's very strange - live and learn. Unfortunately that's what life is all about."

Unhappily nobody does seem to have learned that sport and sausages do not mix. With the result that the Munich courts found themselves pondering whether a pork sausage called "Schweini" was breaching the individual rights of a millionaire footballer called "Schweini".

After due deliberation they ruled against the sausage. The meat product wholesaler was convicted of infringing the rights of the claimant and ordered to provide details of the profits made on his sausage, so that an evaluation of damages can be made.

And so the "Schweini" you can grill and smother in onions is no more. As the German's are fond of saying, "Everything has an end, only the sausage has two." Or not, in this case.

Mirage

That is really strange. It cant be true. I would have heard about it before Razz

MUTU

VAN BOMMEL BLASTS DUTCH COACH

Bayern Munich midfielder Mark van Bommel has hit out at Holland coach Marco van Basten for selecting certain players regardless of how well they are playing.

Van Bommel announced last year that he would no longer play for Holland as long as van Basten was in charge.

The former Barcelona man was last called up to the national team ahead of the Euro 2008 qualifier against Bulgaria on October 7, but withdrew along with Real Madrid's Ruud van Nistelrooy, with both claiming van Basten favoured certain players.

Van Bommel told Voetbal International magazine: "I have never said that I will not play for the Oranje, but I refuse to play for a team where he [van Basten] is the coach.

"You can say over and over again that you select players solely because of their footballing ability, but that isn't what he is doing.

"Because if he did that the players from the top leagues would all be selected. Why is it that one player needs to have match sharpness and another player not?

"Why can one player be out of shape [and selected] and the other not? When it comes to technical arguments, it can't be possible not to select me."

Van Bommel also denied claims by the national team coach that discussions have been held between the two over the form of the combative midfielder.

"Van Basten constantly comes out with arguments that don't fit," he added.

"And I am sick and tired about his remarks about all sorts of discussions that he has had with me about me not doing my job properly. That's just not true."

MUTU

Bayern Munich coach Ottmar Hitzfeld revealed on Wednesday that the health problems which forced him to retire in 2004 have returned.

The 58-year-old was only persuaded back to Bayern's helm in February after Felix Magath was sacked, but the stress of coaching the German giants is taking its toll on his health once more and he has already lost two kilos.

Hitzfeld has agreed to coach Bayern next season, but is planning a major recruitment drive over the summer with his side set to miss out on a Champions League place next season for the first time in 11 years.

"I must make sure I don't lose too much weight and I have to make sure I find my time for switching off and relaxing," Hitzfeld told German sports magazine Sport-Bild in the wake of his side's 2-0 defeat at VfB Stuttgart last weekend.

"It's too easy to not be able to see the wood for the trees when the pressure of the job starts building up."

Although the stomach complaint which affected him in 2004 is showing signs of returning, the 2001 World Coach of the Year is managing his condition with relaxation.

"After spending the whole day dealing with football, I make sure I switch off after 8pm and do something completely different, read or just relax," he said.

But Hitzfeld stressed he is enjoying his time back with Bayern.

"I am proud to be Bayern coach. It is a lot of fun, even if it doesn't always seem so at the time."

Walls

German football icon Franz Beckenbauer was told on Sunday to cease criticising the management of fallen German champions Bayern Munich by the club president Karl-Heinz Rummenigge.

Beckenbauer, a World Cup winner both as a player and a manager with the then West Germany, is president of the surveillance council for Bayern but has made some heavy hitting remarks aimed at Rummenigge and general manager Uli Hoeness of late as Bayern lost all hope of retaining the title.

However on Sunday Rummenigge hit back.

"His (Beckenbauer's) criticisms don't only irritate me but also the financial directors and administrators of the club," Rummenigge told Die Welt.

Beckenbauer, known as the 'Kaiser' and who was roundly applauded for his presidency of the World Cup organising committee last year, has attacked the manner in which the management team did not replace German captain Michael Ballack, who left on a free transfer for Chelsea last summer, or the dressing room rift with former coach Felix Magath, who was sacked in January.

Bayern are having their worst season for 10 years, with no trophies and struggling to even make the top three in the league which would see them miss out on a Champions League place.

tracylynn

Soccer stars win sex toy suit
Mon May 14, 2007 8:58AM EDT

BERLIN (Reuters) - German sex shop chain Beate Uhse must pay German soccer stars Michael Ballack and Oliver Kahn 50,000 euros ($67,380) each for using their names for vibrators without permission, the company said Monday.

The company had marketed the sex toys, dubbed "Michael B." and "Olli K.," before Germany hosted the World Cup in 2006.

Although the surnames of the two German soccer stars were not used, it was clear they referred to Chelsea midfielder Michael Ballack and Bayern Munich goalkeeper Oliver Kahn.

Kahn and national team captain Ballack sued Beate Uhse in court for unauthorized use of their names and won.

"The products have been withdrawn," the spokeswoman said. "We have to pay 50,000 euros to each of them."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I dont know what to say but this is too funny. Laughing

bayern1301

the oddity of it all lol...

FC Bajern

Altintop v Altintop | Hamit: I just don’t want my brother to score

They both wore the Turkey shirt on Wednesday evening and celebrated together at the final whistle after a clear-cut 3-0 Euro 2008 qualifying victory over Hungary, but the following morning, and two days ahead of the Bundesliga’s biggest match of the weekend between Bayern and Schalke 04, Hamit and Halil Altintop went their separate ways and prepared to go head-to-head.

“I’m glad there’s so little time between the international and the Schalke match,” Hamit reflected after returning to Munich on Thursday. “There’s basically no time to brood on it,” continued the 24-year-old utility man, contemplating a double reunion at the Allianz Arena on Saturday, as he comes face-to-face both with his twin and his former club. “It’s obviously a special game for me.”

Emotional occasion

There is more to it than simply pride between himself and his 12-minute younger brother. Hamit appeared in the League Cup final against Schalke back in July, but the weekend meeting is a much weightier affair. “It’s a competitive fixture, and we urgently need the points. It’ll be a much more emotional occasion,” Altintop argued.

Hamit cannot afford to make allowances for Halil on Saturday. “I used to keep an eye out for my brother when we played each other in the past,” he revealed, recalling the younger Altintop’s spell in Kaiserslautern. “But nowadays it doesn’t matter to me what does for 90 minutes - I just don’t want him to score.”

No wagers

The Turkey international pair used to place a private bet or two before previous family clashes, but not on this occasion. “Halil didn’t want to bet on the outcome. I can understand that. They’re away from home against Bayern,” Hamit grinned. “I tried to tempt him into a bet, but Halil put a stop to it right from the start.“

Until around a quarter past five on Saturday, family allegiances will be put to one side. “I really hope Schalke do well in the Champions League. But I want to win with the club I play for,” Hamit explained: “We want to play good football, and then afterwards we’ll embrace, no matter how it turns out.“

FC Bajern

First female referee in German professional football

German football history was made when 28-year old police officer Bibiana Steinhaus refereed the game between SC Paderborn and 1899 Hoffenheim, a match of the Second Bundesliga. Steinhaus joined the ranks in 1995, and has been promoted to the elite circle of FIFA referess since then. She had been officiating games of the Regionalliga, the 3rd division in Germany, for the last six years.

Media attention was tremendous, the sheer number of TV crews unheard of at a game of the Second Bundesliga. “That the media will watch my every move does not come unexpected”, said Steinhaus. “I just feel elated that the board of referees has given me their vote of confidence. I’ll work very hard to repay their confidence in me.” Saturday night, she will be a guest at the ZDF’s “Aktuelles Sportstudio”, one of the most popular sports shows on German television.

As a very young girl, she used to play football herself – “but without any success”, she remembers. In 1995, she followed in her father’s footsteps, who had been a football official himself: In 1999, she started to conduct games in the women’s Bundesliga, in 2001 in the men’s Regionalliga, in 2005 she became a FIFA referee.

Volker Roth, who heads the referee’s board of the Deutscher Fußball-Bund (DFB), is full of praise for Steinhaus: “We took a real close look at her performances, and she always received great grades. Everybody should be aware that she had to perform on the men’s level.”

Bibiana Steinhaus took the field without any fears, she felt very much up to the challenge. “Really, it’s much tougher to officiate in the lower leagues. Players and referees bond much more in the upper leagues. And there are much less verbal injuries.”

dfb.de

MUTU

She looks ok as well Smile

FC Bajern

When Bayern go travelling for European competitions, Gerd Müller is invariably there with the team. The man once known as ‘Der Bomber’, who himself scored 66 goals in 74 international matches for Bayern, is something of a talisman for the men from Munich. Coming hard on the heels of the withdrawal through injury of Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski, Ottmar Hitzfeld can only hope that some of Müller’s sharpshooting prowess rubs off on the current side.

During the journey to Lisbon fcbayern.de seized the opportunity to speak with Müller about the absence of Klose and its impact on Luca Toni, and about his scoring record of 40 goals in a Bundesliga season. Will it ever be broken?

The Gerd Müller interview:

fcbayern.de Bayern must do without Miroslav Klose und Lukas Podolski for the game in Lisbon. Is that why Ottmar Hitzfeld has brought along “Der Bomber”, as a talisman?
Gerd Müller: (Laughs). “No, in fact I travel with Bayern on all their Champions’ League trips, and of course in the UEFA Cup too.”

fcbayern.de How serious do you think the absence of Klose will be?
Gerd Müller: “I believe Klose is a terrific forward. He’s strong in the air, shields the ball excellently, and always lays the ball off skilfully for his colleagues. Everything he’s done so far has been top-class.”

fcbayern.de The dream duo of Klose and Toni has been parted for the moment. How difficult will it now be for Luca alone up front?
Gerd Müller: “If Miroslav can’t play, it’s more difficult for Luca Toni. As a lone striker you always find it more difficult, because when you’re on your own the defence can focus on you better. And in addition Klose has already set up a few goals for Toni.”

fcbayern.de After Klose scored eight goals in the first eight Bundesliga matches people have started talking about whether your record from the 1972-73 season might be in danger…
Gerd Müller: “I do believe that some day, someone will break the record. But first you have to score 40 goals, and it will be hard for Miroslav now with this injury. But talking about it doesn’t seem to bring people luck. Two years ago Roy Makaay was considered a candidate to score 40 goals after he hit six in the first three matches. But then he got injured and afterwards he didn’t score for ages.”

fcbayern.de Ottmar Hitzfeld believes your record will still be standing 50 years from now.
Gerd Müller: “I think that if no-one does it this season, then no-one will manage it for a long time. But if anyone is capable score 40 goals, it would be Miroslav Klose.”

FC Bajern

1. Klose 29,3 %
2. Toni 21,7 %
3. Ribéry 15,4 %
4. Demichelis 5,5 %
5. Zé Roberto 3,9 %
6. Altintop 3,8 %
7. Van Bommel 2,7 %
8. Kahn 2,3 %
9. Schweinsteiger 2,1 %
10. Kroos 1,7 %

In Bundesliga player of the month Diego won Klose came second and Jones(Schalke) was third