No Smoke And Mirrors Here

So how is Karlsruhe doing it? Their win against Stuttgart, while surprising, was in the long run a derby game, and in retrospect Stuttgart is pot anyway. But when Karlsruhe waltzed into Veltins and walked away with a 2-0 win against a team that hadn’t lost this year, Karlsruhe was officially “for real”.

Studying this weekend’s game in Gelsenkirchen, there is only one reason for Karlsruhe’s current ascendancy; however, there are a few items to dismiss first. They could be construed as causation, when they are in fact, systematic of something else entirely.

The first is injuries: in this case to the opposing teams. While Karlsruhe has led a relatively healthy campaign so far, Schalke has not been so fortunate. They were missing two of their stalwart defenders in Christian Pander and Mladen Krstajic. While Heiko Westermann did a reasonable good job partnering Bordon in Krstajic’s stead, it was easy to see that Bordon felt less liberated in moving forward without the excellent man-marker Krstajic to hold the fort. And Westermann got caught in no-man’s land on the second goal. Meanwhile, 19 year-old Benedikt Howedes was a little shakier in Pander’s place, but Karlsruhe’s manager Edmund Becker failed to take advantage of this and attacked Schalke’s left much less than he should have.

Poor calls definitely hurt Schalke in this game. Kevin Kuranyi was whistled incorrectly for offside on three occasions. The first would have provided a lead. The second would have provided an equalizer or cushion, depending on how you might read the game as having proceeded after the first goal. This was huge and definitely cost Schalke the game, but it does not explain Karlsruhe’s season, as they don’t get “every” call.

Tactics turned the game quite significantly, but more against Mirko Slomka than for Becker. Slomka made a slew of tactical decisions that hurt the Royal Blues chances in this game, but they are endemic of the season. It was just that Karlsruhe was the first to take full advantage of the mistakes.

First, Slomka insists on playing without width. He employed four central midfielders in his lineup. And while Jermaine Jones is willing to slot wide on the right on a few occasions, Zlatan Bajramovic has no idea where the touch line on the left is to be found. The only width that Schalke typically employs is from their backs or when Asamoah or Kuranyi wander out wide. But the entire system is built around Kuranyi expertise in the air, so taking him out of the box while Jones and Bajramovic wander aimlessly is inept. Slomka did see the mistake and rightly brought Özil on at the beginning of the second half, and that is just when Kuranyi became dangerous and the aforementioned linesman’s shenanigan’s started.

Slomka’s second tactical error was the removal of Asamoah for Lovenkrands. This actually worked in the Ligapokal meeting between the two sides that went Schalke’s way. But back then Kuranyi had played deep rather than forward. In this game, up until the substitution there was a stalemate in the midfield, even though Schalke was playing narrow. Hajnal, KSC’s midfield general, was totally absent from the game for the first 60 minutes of the game. Porcello was inauspicious as well. But Lovenkrands is a forward, while Asamoah is a forward disguised as a midfield, who likes to come back for the ball and hold. With Asamoah, Schalke overpowered Karlsruhe, clogged channels and negated their effectiveness (their width problems negated their own). When the Dane came on, the five-man midfield became a four-man mid and channels opened up quickly. Timms was free on the right within four minutes of the change.

But these point to what hurt Schalke, not why Karlruhe is a contender. The problem with all of these is that they leave out Karlsruhe’s strength, that which has made them impossible to beat on the road and put them second in the table. And it stands in direct contrast to what they were expected to do coming up this year as a high-scoring second division team. We expected that they would push teams with tempo, but what they are doing is stifling them with a stellar defense. They have given up 12 goals this season, but four of them were to FC Bayern and three were away to Bayer 04. Otherwise they have three clean sheets, and Millar has looked rock-solid between the sticks. The central pairing of Eichner and Franz is superb and the backs of Eggimann and Gorlitz defend first. Eggimann, in particular, does not seem one to escape the attention of bigger clubs for long. Yes, tiny Karlsruhe with its record breaking offense in Zwei last year is one of the most competent defensive units in the Bundesliga. That’s how they are doing it. No smoke and mirrors. Good old fashion defending.