Only kidding with the title. :D

So this weekend both the French and German leagues will, likely be settled.

In France, Lyon are finally off their perch after SEVEN straight titles, but dented Marseille's chances at the title with a win away on Sunday. Now, if im not mistaken, a win for Bordeaux and any dropped points for L'OM result in Bordeaux grabbing the title. Personally, im just glad to see a different champion than Lyon, but its nice to see a young manager like Blanc having success. Also, PSG have a chance to be back in the CL after coming close to relegation (fingers crossed for them)

In Germany, this is the final weekend for the Bundesliga, and Woflsburg are 2 points up on Bayern (the same Bayern who have just recently axed Klinsmann) and Stuttgart. Theyre up against Weder Bremen, so there could be an interesting final matchday. Hertha Berlin still may sneak a CL place, and Hamburg may still sneak a UEFA cup spot from Dortmund. Once again, its a bit refreshing seeing a brand new champion

Anyone gonna be keeping tabs on these ones? Might be a great chance to have a last look at Dzeko or Ribery before the summer. Also, apparently many of Bordeaux's stars will be up for grabs in the summer

Dunno if anyone is watching any German footie today (48 views and no responses is not encouraging ) but at halftime Wolfsburg are up 3-1, while Bayern are edging Stuttgart by a single goal. Barring a crazy turn of events, it looks like Wolfsburg might just do it

in germany it always seems te be bayern...once shalke had the title in their hands ( they thought) for bayern to score in the 95 min and steal the title, you can't put anything past them....but wolfsburg are 4-1 up so i think it's all over

Edited May 23, 200917 yr by chelsea rotterdam

The boy Dzeko makes it 5-1. Bluebosnian might have spotted a gem in this lad

I'll certainly be keeping a close eye on the French league as Bordeaux are the French club I follow.

Barring disaster they should do it, as they need 4 points to be sure. Their remaining games are Monaco (11th) at home tonight and then Caen (16th) away next weekend. Marseille are 3 points behind and face Nancy (13th) away tonight and then Rennes (7th) at home next weekend.

Marseille are 3 points behind and have a +1 better goal difference but that of course could change.

As for players being available in the summer, they'd be reluctant to let their best players go having won the league and qualified for the champions league. Gourcuff, their midfield playmaker on loan from Milan, hasn't yet decided whether he will stay beyond the end of this season, but the club are desperate to keep him.

I'd be gutted if Marseille won as I've hated them with a passion ever since I went to the Chelsea champions league game there a few years back and the welcome wasn't exactly warm...

I guess its hard to look bad when you score and your team wins by four, but Dzeko did impress me today. He and Grafite are now the most prolific Bundesliga duo ever, even more than Uli Hoeness and Muller

Its great to see the fans rush the pitch, congratulating the players. I wish it was still like that in all sport Congratulations to Wolfsburg

Yep congratulations to Wolfsburg. Nice to see someone new winning a major title for once.

Yep congratulations to Wolfsburg. Nice to see someone new winning a major title for once.

Absolutely, especially for the first time ever. You can see how much it means to these folks. There was a fella cutting out a bit of the netting for his scrapbook using a lighter of all things

Edited May 23, 200917 yr by TheWestwayWonder

Absolutely, especially for the first time ever. You can see how much it means to these folks. There was a fella cutting out a bit of the netting for his scrapbook using a lighter

Classic. Although it wasn't our first win ever, I guess we can relate to how these guys feel from when we won the title at Bolton.

I'll certainly be keeping a close eye on the French league as Bordeaux are the French club I follow.

Barring disaster they should do it, as they need 4 points to be sure. Their remaining games are Monaco (11th) at home tonight and then Caen (16th) away next weekend. Marseille are 3 points behind and face Nancy (13th) away tonight and then Rennes (7th) at home next weekend.

Marseille are 3 points behind and have a +1 better goal difference but that of course could change.

As for players being available in the summer, they'd be reluctant to let their best players go having won the league and qualified for the champions league. Gourcuff, their midfield playmaker on loan from Milan, hasn't yet decided whether he will stay beyond the end of this season, but the club are desperate to keep him.

I'd be gutted if Marseille won as I've hated them with a passion ever since I went to the Chelsea champions league game there a few years back and the welcome wasn't exactly warm...

Sorry if it was inaccurate info, Wicksy, I was just going on the press b.s. that had been reported. Im really pulling for Bordeaux myself, especially after seeing their fans in the CL this year. Plus I love seeing a non-powerhouse champ. Im just glad Lyon have finally been toppled!

Classic. Although it wasn't our first win ever, I guess we can relate to how these guys feel from when we won the title at Bolton.

Absolutely, I remember not being happy until it was mathematically impossible for anyone to catch us, maybe that was the skeptic in me from the Ranieiri years. Im sure these Wolfsburg folks were expecting some kind of last minute Bayern luck, as Rotterdam alluded to there

Edited May 23, 200917 yr by TheWestwayWonder

Where the f**k in Germany is Wolfsburg anyway? Is it near Pigsburg, sorry I mean Hamburg?

Wolfsburg actually has a crazy history, Geezer. The city itself is smack dab in the middle of Northern Germany in Lower Saxony, so not too far from Hannover and Hamburg, I guess.

Its a bit long, but if you have a moment this piece from Soccernet is worth a read. The team and town have a very interesting history

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story...ope&cc=5901

The Big, Green W

Unlike their counterparts in Spain, England and France, German clubs treat the year of their foundation with such reverence that it almost always forms a part of the official club name.

The team commonly known as 'Gladbach', for instance, is technically called 'VfL Borussia 1900 Mönchengladbach'. Many clubs are even referred to by contractions that point out when they were formed: Schalke 04, Bayer 04 (Leverkusen), Mainz 05, BVB 09 (Dortmund), Hannover 96 and of course Munich 1860. Many more at least carry the dates in their club badge, like Bochum, Düsseldorf, St. Pauli or Duisburg do. (VfB Stuttgart's logo said '1893' but not 'Stuttgart' until 1999.)

But take a look at the club who's topping the Bundesliga table now. Its official name is simply 'VfL Wolfsburg', which for legal reasons only should be followed by a 'Football Ltd.' since the professional football division was turned into a company in 2001. The club badge displays a fat, green 'W' and that's it. If this makes you suspect there must be more to it, well, you're right.

However, before we disclose a truly strange history, a brief excursion may be necessary

.

'VfL' means 'Club for Physical Exercises'. Those exercises are badminton, basketball, bowling, swimming, dancing, scuba diving and a dozen other sports besides, among them 'Wushu', a martial art and, no, I'm not pulling a fast one on you.

It's simply that Wolfsburg are like any other German club: They were formed as a public, non-profit, multi-sports organisation that offered kids and adults various diversions, football being just one of many. Which leads us back to the badge with no date.

VfL Wolfsburg were founded as late as September of 1945, which means they are the most tradition-free club in the German professional game, apart from the teams that come from the former GDR. (Where the state reorganised the whole sporting structure after the war). There is a saying that goes: 'If three Germans go together anywhere, the first thing they do is form a club.' So why didn't Wolfsburg have a club before the war?

Easy. There was no city. 'Wolfsburg' means 'Wolf's Castle', and that's basically all this place amounted to until the late 1930s: a castle dating back to the 13th century. Then, in 1931, an automobile designer by the name of Ferdinand Porsche began entertaining the idea of building a simple, good car that anyone could afford, in other words: a 'people's car', or, in German, a 'Volkswagen'.

Two years later, Porsche met the new Chancellor of the Reich, Adolf Hitler, and the two realised they had the same goal, as Hitler was very interested in motorising Germany. (Though his motives were quite different from Porsche's.)

In 1936, three prototypes were built and ran so smoothly that Hitler agreed to mass production. In 1938, he himself laid the foundation stone for a gigantic car plant, not far from the old Wolf's Castle and a village called Fallersleben, the birth place of the poet who penned the words to the German national anthem. That plant was, of course, the 'Volkswagen Werk', though Hitler referred to the car as the 'Kraft durch Freude' ('Strength through Joy') or KdF-Car.

Thousands of people went to Fallersleben to build the factories and then the cars, thus a new city was planned around the plant. It was called 'The City of the Kdf-Car' (I kid you not!) until 1945, when it was renamed for obvious reasons and has since been known as Wolfsburg.

Wolfsburg's club was quite successful, winning, among other things, a gold medal at the 1972 Olympics. However, that medal went to a track-and-field athlete, as the club's football division was, shall we say, lagging behind in terms of performance.

From the beginning of the Bundesliga in 1963 until 1975, Wolfsburg were in the Second Division. Then they got relegated to the third, bounced back and appeared gone for good when they suffered the drop again in 1977. Fifteen long years of amateur football followed, although it was suffered by very few fans. In 1985/86, for instance, the club drew slightly over a cumulative total of 9.000 in all seventeen home games.

Things changed in 1991, when Volkswagen could no longer bear such incompetence right there under the eyes of a true world player. One of Volkswagen's employees, a man called Peter Pander, was told to go and look after VfL Wolfsburg's senior football team. Pander did just that and quickly found new sponsors. (Volkswagen, however, preferred to stay in the background, because you wouldn't want to have a huge, successful company associated with an unknown bunch of kickers in the third division, would you?)

In 1992, Wolfsburg won promotion to the Second Bundesliga. Two years later, they beat Frankfurt and Cologne en route to the Cup Final, which they eventually lost to Gladbach. Now Volkswagen slowly began to become involved with the club and were rewarded in June 1997, when Wolfsburg won promotion to the Bundesliga. In 1999, the club finished sixth, qualified for the UEFA-Cup and made the third round before being beaten at home by Atlético Madrid.

Yet that game against the Spaniards (watched by only 11,000, the capacity back then being 20,000) is not the highlight of Wolfsburg's rise, as there are four much more meaningful occasions.

On November 7, 1998, Wolfsburg won 7-1 against one of the great names in German football lore, Borussia Mönchengladbach. On August 25, 2001, Wolfsburg's amateur team (the reserve side) eliminated mighty Borussia Dortmund from the Cup. On July 11, 2003, Wolfsburg signed the gifted young Argentinian Andres D'Alessandro for €9m, the club's record transfer fee and got a player who had many other clubs to choose from.

And on September 19, 2004, when Stuttgart only drew with Hertha Berlin, VfL Wolfsburg were in first place in the Bundesliga for the first time in their history. That's something, even if this history isn't awfully long.

In another article, the same author was saying some German fans would rather see Bayern win it because they think VFL have no fans. What a load of tripe, and it reminds me of all the knobs who were saying we didnt deserve the title because of the money spent building the squad

Edited May 23, 200917 yr by TheWestwayWonder

Great read, thanks for that. Send it to Liverpool fans because that is what real history means.

Someone recently asked what away days we could look forward to in next years CL. Although many are turning their back on the competition this is one place I really wouldn't mind visiting. It's steeped in history and though history has never been one of my favourite topics I found myself fascinated by the subject during a visit to Berlin last year. Here's hoping we draw Wolfsburg in the initial stages next year.

Bordeaux and Marseille both won tonight, so it leaves Bordeaux needing to draw their last game, away to Caen, to be sure of the title.

Bordeaux are my Dad's local side so I have high hopes that they will win - be good to get them in the CL again.

Bordeaux are my Dad's local side so I have high hopes that they will win - be good to get them in the CL again.

If we do, hope to see you at the away game Loz. It was a cracking trip this season, even though we played sh*te!

If we do, hope to see you at the away game Loz. It was a cracking trip this season, even though we played sh*te!

Well we did have a sh*te manager at the time

I couldn't do it this season due to the bank balance being as impressive as Victoria Beckham's bust however if we draw them again I will again be convinced that this time I will manage it!

We'll drag you over this time

Does that mean I will require my Dr Frank-n-Furter costume?

If that's what it takes to get you out there then yes

I obviously wont be able to enjoy it in person, but CL away ties in Germany or France are really something. They may not be the "big boys" of European football all the time, but the things I always recall seeing a great atmosphere, crazy fans, and a wide open game played by their teams. Its enjoyable to see even on tv

Plus im sure its a big easier on the wallet than going to Italy or Spain