Spätestens seit letztem Freitag weht ein unangenehmer Geruch durch Karlsruhes Straßen. Der faulige Geruch der dritten Liga hängt über der Fächerstadt.

Nach der erneuten Niederlage gegen Fortuna Düsseldorf sollte es jedem klar sein, auch wenn viele es nicht wahrhaben wollen: Der KSC spielt gegen den Abstieg.

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Der Karlsruher SC macht Ordnung. Neuer Trainer ist da, scheinbar ein Mann mit Erfahrung, Markus Schupp mit Namen. Weil niemand ihn wirklich kennt, wird er kurzfristig zum Wunschkandidat erklärt, der badische Traditionsverein legt doch seine Mannschaft nicht in jedermanns Hände. Keeper Miller endlich wieder da, wo er hingehört, nämlich im Tor.

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There are some clubs in the Bundesliga where even Obama fails.

Energie Cottbus grabbed a lifeline by securing the relegation play-off spot, but ended up having not even close to a chance in their tie against FC Nuremberg, who beat them 5-0 on aggregate to end all eastern German presence in the Bundesliga.

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It's time to brush up on your knowledge of provincial Germany and long forgotten club name prefixes. The draw for the first round of next season's DFB-Pokal took place today.

Personal Picks of the Round:
Kickers Offenbach - Eintracht Frankfurt (Fierce Derby, Arch Rivals = Fun and Violence - not that the two should go together and hopefully it'll be mostly peaceful)
Fortuna Düsseldorf - Hamburger SV (sure to become a 51500 sell out)
Union Berlin - Werder Bremen (Union's fan renovated Old Forestry stadium deserved no less than the title holder for it's first official match)

Everybody else
Germania Windeck - Schalke 04
Concordia Hamburg - TuS Koblenz
Sportfreunde Lotte - VfL Bochum
Tennis Borussia Berlin - Karlsruher SC
Dynamo Dresden - 1.

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Congratulations Wolfsburg, Champions of the Bundesliga!

Wolfsburg's magical triangle all scored as the Wolves beat a deflated Werder Bremen 5-1 at home. Their home form was paramount in their unlikely title run as they took an incredible 49 points out of 51 during the campaign. It was incredibly important, as they didn't start winning on the road until the second half of the season.

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What good is a liveblog in a tape-delayed world? I have no idea. I'll leave this philosophical question unanswered and let our American readers deal with it.

For everyone else it's season 46 episode 34 of the Bundesliga. We've already been served 2970 minutes high on excitement and low on answers - the latter will have to be packed into the upcoming 90 minutes.

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9:30 ET Schalke 04 VS TSG Hoffenheim
9:30 ET Bayern Munich VS VfB Stuttgart
9:30 ET VfL Wolfsburg VS Werder Bremen
9:30 ET Arminia Bielefeld VS Hannover 96
9:30 ET Energie Cottbus VS Bayer Leverkusen
9:30 ET FC Cologne VS VfL Bochum
9:30 ET Karlsruhe VS Hertha Berlin
9:30 ET Borussia Monchengladbach VS Borussia Dortmund
9:30 ET Eintracht Frankfurt VS Hamburg SV

The Meisterschaft will hinge on Wolfsburg, whom only need a draw at home to Werder Bremen, who wouldn't been keen on helping Bayern Munich in the first place.

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Three matchdays to go and there is still pretty much everything to play for at the top and the bottom of the table. A welcome change to last season, where we had to make do with a little tussle for the UEFA Cup and Intertoto spots and Nuremberg putting up not much of a fight to avoid the drop. This time around it could all go down to the final matchday.

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Bayer Leverkusen – Arminia Bielefeld 1-1

For the Bayer team, a good luck charm is something else but the LTU-Arena in Düsseldorf. Remaining without a single win in their temporary home, Leverkusen is failing over and over again to defeat even the lower positioned teams. Anyway, they only have one ‘home' game left before the season is over.

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Irgendwie konnte man es ja ahnen, dass der VfL Wolfsburg den Quasi-Matchball zur Meisterschaft vergibt. Diese Liga will einfach keine klaren Verhältnisse. Platz 1-5 werden nach Ende des 29. Spieltags durch magere drei Punkte voneinander getrennt, die Meisterschaft ist offener denn je. Und obwohl Energie-Manager Steffen Heidrich im Kicker vor dem Spiel gegen Wolfsburg klarstellte, Hoeneß brauche keine Wurstpakete schicken, um Cottbus zu motivieren, so ist es nicht auszuschließen, dass der Bayernmanager den Lausitzern jetzt gerne den ein oder anderen Siegeswurstkranz aufsetzen oder umhängen würde.

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Wenn ein Spiel sonst nicht viel zu bieten hat, dann muss halt ein kurioser Treffer her, um es sehenswert zu machen. So geschehen heute in der LTU-Arena bei der Partie zwischen Bayer Leverkusen und dem Karlsruher SC. In der 71. Minute kommt es zu einem Zweikampf in der Nähe der Mittellinie, Leverkusen rückt raus, Sebastian Langkamp grätscht zum Ball und drischt die Kugel direkt in die Maschen.

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28' 0-1 Salihovic [TSG 1889 Hoffenheim] 33' 1-1 Freis [Karlsruher SC] 48' 1-2 Teber [TSG 1899 Hoffenheim] 65' 2-2 Giovani Federico [Karlsruher SC] DISCLAIMER: Calcioplus non hosta alcun video pubblicato su di esso. Tutti i video pubblicati sono caricati da amanti di calcio su siti di video hosting come Youtube e Dailymotion ed ubicati dunque su siti Click to continue reading...

I never heard of Goldman Morgenstern & Partners Financial Intelligence Service before, but they published a press release which lists the turnover of each Bundesliga club for the 2007/2008 season. The data seems to come from an article in the print edition of Kicker magazine. Said article supposedly dealt with the official Bundesliga report for [. Click to continue reading...

3 - Likely number of German top goalscorers over the past 10 years by season's end.  With Ibisevic's injury cementing his tally at 18, it seems likely that Patrick Helmes (17), Mario Gomez or Grafite (14 each) will end up with title of Torschützenkönig.  BUT if Grafite were to win, it'd increase the number of [. Click to continue reading...

A running commentary of the weekend's Bundesliga action. Feel free to share your thoughts via the comments. This weekend all times will be Pacific Standard Time (PST, CET -9h) to help Landon Donovan get used to life in Los Angeles again. *** Friday [22.00] Schalke 1-0 Cologne Schalke scored a brilliantly strung together team goal. Click to continue reading...

A running commentary of the weekend's Bundesliga action. Feel free to share your thoughts via the comments. This weekend all times will be Peru Time (PET, CET -6h), in honor of Werder Bremen's man of the match against Milan: Claudio Pizzarro. *** Saturday [07.35] This edition is a bit late. I was out on Friday and could only [. Click to continue reading...

A running commentary of the weekend's Bundesliga action. Feel free to share your thoughts via the comments. I modified the format a bit and introduced timestamps. Due to the time-zone spanning super-global nature of this blog, I decided to feature a different timezone each week. In honor of one of our most frequent commenters I'll [. Click to continue reading...

1. Hertha Berlin (2-1 home win against Bayern) Just think how good this team could be with half their starters back. Actually it probably wouldn't be much better as those injuries haven't been significant to their back line, and that is where the strength of the Old Lady lies. I will say, that after [. Click to continue reading...

How do you promote anti-right wing extremism, anti-racism, anti anti-semitism, anti-sexism and anti-homophobia with one big stadium friendly choreo? Check out tonight's Werder - AC Milan match and see for yourself. (Bundesliga Talk) The former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is a boon for the Bundesliga. Click to continue reading...

Hertha Berlin 2-1 Bayern Munich As we all expected, Hertha go top after a typical home victory over Bayern Munich. Not! Congratulations to all Hertha fans. It is time to start talking about this fairy tale rather than Hoffenheim. And Rafael Benitez shows that his ability to judge strikers might be as poor as [. Click to continue reading...

A running commentary of the weekend's Bundesliga action. Feel free to share your thoughts via the comments. *** Friday Trivial pre-match stats: Hoffenheim have lost four of five top of the table clashes. Hoffenheim will play four of those five top of the table clashes at home in the second half of the season. Click to continue reading...

Die Niederlage des FC Bayern gegen den HSV sollte ein Weckruf für die Konkurrenz sein, nicht alles zu glauben, was so in den Medien steht. Nämlich dass es nur eine Frage der Zeit ist, wann das Münchner Starensemble um Ribery und Co die Tabellenführung übernimmt und unaufhaltsam davonzieht. Doch nur einen Spieltag später präsentiert sich [. Click to continue reading...

The third goal was fantastic. The fourth too. And the second as well. Lucien Favre's stream of consciousness in the wake of Hertha's 4:0 victory over Karlsruhe. You can scrutinize the validity/bias of this statement in the disappointingly chronologic video below. Click to continue reading...

Why waste a perfectly good slogan on boring politics, when three points and a place in the Bundesliga are at stake? At least Karlsruhe fans thought so ahead of the match against Werder Bremen (1-0). Bremen is the smallest of Germany's Federal States, but thanks to DFL rules is still worth a full three points. Click to continue reading...

Oh, was sehe ich schon die Schlagzeilen einer Dortmunder Lokalzeitung. Platz 4. Das ist doch mal was für das schwarz gelbe Fussballherz. Dabei hätten die Dortmunder heute gegen Karlsruhe ruhig schon in der ersten Halbzeit den Sack zumachen können. Chancen genug hätten da sein müssen. Müssen, waren sie aber nicht. Click to continue reading...

In the club's last 8 matches, Karlsruher SC has 1 win, 1 draw, and 6 losses.
The Bundesliga side hosts Borussia Dortmund this weekend. Click to continue reading...

Edin Dzeko Against Cottbus 1. Bayer Leverkusen The subtitle to their season should be "how we got to the top with a crap defense". They conceded goals by a misdirect from the wall on a free kick, allowing Tim Sebastian to waltz freely on another and letting 5'9 Iashvilli outjump a defender. If it [. Click to continue reading...

Edin Dzeko Against Cottbus 1. Bayer Leverkusen The subtitle to their season should be "how we got to the top with a crap defense". They conceded goals by a misdirect from the wall on a free kick, allowing Tim Sebastian to waltz freely on another and letting 5'9 Iashvilli outjump a defender. If it [. Click to continue reading...

In the light of ever more Hoffenheim table topping, coverage and hype, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at how much of their success is Dietmar Hopp's money and how much of it is Ralf Rangnick's genius. While at it, I decided to do the same for the remaining 17 Bundesliga [...] Click to continue reading...

Karlsruhe and Eintracht Frankfurt repaid the 80 minutes of my life (and the 51,000 strong at the Commerz Bank Arena) that they stole with a scintillating finish. A game that was so boring that it would be offensive to compare it to the oft-used paint drying scenario, erupted into a comedy of blunders in [. Click to continue reading...

Please click on picture to see all the caricatures of German footballers from Pit Hammanns Hamburg SV The Dinosaurs face Schalke in the most intriguing game of the weekend. They have lost three of the last four matches against the Royal Blues at Nordbank. Chances for this weekend's game don't seem great with Nigel de [. Click to continue reading...

Ein sattes Fünftel der Saison ist vorbei, und so langsam gilt die Ausrede nicht mehr, dass die Tabelle noch keine Aussagekraft hat. Besonders bitter ist das für den FC Bayern, der sich zwischen Köln und Karlsruhe auf Platz 11 wiederfindet. Der Klinsmann-Effekt hat dem Rekordmeister bisher nur zwei Siege in sieben Bundesligaspielen, dafür aber satte [. Click to continue reading...

The DFB-Pokal Round of 16 draw took place on Sunday, and the UEFA Cup group stage draw just concluded an hour ago. DFB-Pokal Round of 16 SC Freiburg - FSV Mainz 05 VfB Stuttgart - Bayern Munich Bayer Leverkusen - Energie Cottbus Hamburger SV - 1860 Munich Karlsruher SC - SV Wehen Wiesbaden VfL Wolfsburg - Hansa Rostock Carl Zeiss Jena - FC [. Click to continue reading...

KSC went to Schüco Arena and came away with their first victory in four road matches and ended an eight game winless streak against Arminia. Arminia were their own worst enemy as they played a terrible first 75 minutes of football. They looked technically deficient compared with their southern foes. Click to continue reading...

0 - Number of wins by Frankfurt, the last remaining winless team 5 - Total number of shots by Gladbach in their 0-1 defeat to Hamburg 7 - Goals scored by Patrick Helmes this season, that's equal to or more than 8 teams (Hertha, Köln, Hannover, Karlsruhe, Bochum, Cottbus, Frankfurt, and Gladbach) 8.06 - The average number of [. Click to continue reading...