Well that was quick. The tour of China by Arminia Bielefeld proved to be quite nice to die Blauen, resulting in a win and a draw over Wuhan FC and FC Shenhua Shanghai respectively. Up first was Wuhan FC, who finished 7th in this season's edition of the Chinese Super League. Wuhan (also know as Wuhan Guanggu) has been moderately successful recently, earning promotion to the CSL by winning the Chinese Second division back in 2004. In their first season, Wuhan took the CSL Cup (a now-defunct League Cup for the members of the CSL), which combined with a respectable league finish made them regulars in China's top division.

For the tour, First team coach Frank Geideck sent out a weakened side in comparison to the one who took on Stuttgart on Saturday, and it didn't seem to matter. Bielefeld for all intents and purposes outplayed them, especially defender Nils Fischer (When asked to choose between Marcelo Bordon or Juan in an interview, he chose Fabio Cannovaro!), who netted two goals in the first half and received the Man of the Match award afterward. Ioannis Masmandis finished up the scoring in the 90th minute to give the visitors an 0-3 victory.

The final score of the match... albeit just before full time. (Image: Bielefeldfotos)

The other match for Arminia was against traditional power Shenhua Shanghai, who finished a disappointing 4th in this season's CSL. In an afternoon match that only garnered around 300 fans, both sides put out weakened lineups, yet put on an entertaining 1-1 match. Markus Schuler put Arminia up 0-1 with a header in the 5th minute with a header, but Shanghai leveled in the 32nd minute on a shot after some nice passing. Both sides had chances as the match went on, culminating with a shot off of the post by Masmandis from a free kick. 

Shenhua Shanghai and Arminia Bielefeld captains pose for photo with match officials before Wednesday's match (Image: Bielefeldfotos) 

All in all, a great result for the tour, and an experience to remember.

On a serious note, the club's website is reporting that forward Abdelaziz Ahanfouf, who did not make the trip to China, was involved in an automobile accident (link auf Deutsch) in Borchen, a small community just outside of Paderborn. According to the police report he colldied with a transport truck coming from Holland. According to team doctors, Ahanfouf sustained injuries to his head and ankle, but was responsive at the hospital and was expected to be released either today (Thursday) or Friday. Like the club, die Blauen Blog passes along best wishes to "Aziz" and hopes he has a speedy recovery!

 Abdelaziz Ahanfouf (Image: Bielefeldfotos)

Expect a light-hearted blog entry this weekend with an update of the Virtual Season, as well as some other fluff. Christmas vacation begins Friday afternoon, and Friday evening will consist of me making fun of my younger brother at his birthday party, so a post on Saturday isn't exactly in the works. See you then! 

Well, things don’t always go as they should. Of course, this should be a given, for yours truly this was the case this past five days or so.

First off, the midweek post was supposed to contain a special surprise, namely the first goal scored by myself in anger in a FIFA 08 match with Arminia Bielefeld. It’s a cracker of a shot from just outside the box by Sibusiso Zuma against Arsenal (!!!), and I wanted to use it as a teaser for something I have planned over the Winter Break (It doesn’t take much thinking for you to figure out what I have planned…). However, since the highlight was too large for OleOle’s video service, I went to upload it to YouTube. Two hours later the file was uploaded… except it wasn’t. All that work for naught. *sigh*. I’ll get it up sooner or later.

Up next was the fact I had a rather important teacher’s exam to take on Saturday, so I programmed my VCR (I’m not rich enough for one of those fancy DVR thingies just yet) to record the South Africa-USA match. I left for the exam, got in the room, was given the exam, started to work on it… then realized that I had registered for the wrong exam. So, instead of showing how much useless history and geography knowledge I have crammed in my brain, I was being asked how much sociological and psychological knowledge I have crammed in my brain. Yes folks, I signed up for the Social Science exam rather than the Social Studies exam. There was only about 6 seconds of panic until I decided to give it a go anyway. Besides, the bosses would get a kick out of the whole situation. I’ll find out how I did in a month, but from how things went I did really well on it. I guess this gets me on the hook for teaching a high school psychology class next time one rolls around…

Because the exam took so long, I got home after the match was over, and I rewound the tape to watch the match… and I got two hours of infomercials. Seems someone turned on the TV and changed the channel before the match started. Ugh. I guess in the grand scheme of things I didn’t miss much, as the game ended up 1-0 for the Americans, but by all accounts Rowan Fernandez acquitted himself well, and Zuma seemed to be MIA in terms of serious chances, yet impressed duNord with his movement and locks. Siyabonga Nkosi didn’t make the 16 man roster for the match, and won’t play against Canada on Wednesday. Why you ask? Well, in action tonight in a friendly, Nkosi netted the final goal in a 6-0 thumping of Bünder SV, an amateur club from nearby Bünde who sit atop the Fußball- und Leichtathletik-Verband Westfalen. (*phew*) 700 folks braved the cold to watch the friendly, which Middendorp used to blood some of the reserves as well as some of the younger first teamers, who were up 4-0 by halftime.

In other news, Bundesliga.de is reporting on the Bundesliga’s Asian Adventure, speaking for the most part about Cottbus and Borussia Dortmund’s shenanigans, but at the end of the article, we get some info on the Arminia Bielefeld friendlies:

Arminia Bielefeld too will play in China in December on their own initiative. Arminia will take on twin city Wuhan on December 18 and Shenhua Shanghai one day later.

I’m working on getting some more information about the friendlies, and I’ll pass it along when I get said info.

One more mention of Bielefeld on the Bundesliga’s website is an interview with defender Rudiger Kauf, who scored in the win against Nurnberg. A line that jumped out was when he stated:

But you always have to be aware that we're Arminia Bielefeld, not one of the teams aiming for Europe. Our budget is one of the smallest, so you have to be aware that we always fight against relegation.

He is correct, in a way, but I hope that he has more than surviving the Bundesliga as his goal for this season. In October’s edition of FourFourTwo, sports psychologist Martin Perry (His not-too-shabby blog can be read here) notes that teams who are either promoted or perennial relegation fodder need to look beyond surviving, and focus on attainable-with-effort goals like a mid-table finish. I, of course, have wildly unrealistic expectations and think Arminia can get to Europe, but we will see.

Here in the States, Thursday marks Thanksgiving, and as a result I’ll be desperately attempting to get away from family members that I really do not like, so as a result I’ll be hiding writing up an Arminiageschichte on the trusty laptop. I would share some turkey with you folks, but it’s likely to be sawdust-dry. Catch you then!

After patting myself on the back for a Blog well done, I was surfing around on the kicker.de site, and on the Arminia Bielefeld page, there is the following story (If you're a native German speaker, forgive any translation errors. My German is, well, nonexistent):

The Big World Tour

The Bundesliga has started a new offencive: During the week of Christmas more Bundesliga clubs will travel to the Far East, where there they will try to start marketing the league in Asian markets again. Currently Borussia Dortmund will travel to Indonesia, Arminia Bielefeld and Energie Cottbus to China, and a trip to Vietnam for Eintracht Frankfurt is also planned.

You can read the rest of the article here (link auf Deutsch)

The article goes from there to discuss the Bundesliga's thinking behind sending clubs to football-mad Asia during the Winter Break, as well as trips to the US to play MLS sides during the MLS offseason. Frankly, the prospect of 1 billion-plus Chinese folks becoming Arminia supporters via the charm of Ernst Middendrop and Artur Wichniarek is tempting, but I'd prefer them to come Stateside to play the Houston Dynamo. That way I could go see them and cheer them on by myself in the visitors' section. At the very least, it would be a great chance to improve Arminia's record in the US...