There are afternoons at Bayern München that test a supporter's patience as much as the team's, and for an hour this was one of them. The home side took a shape designed to frustrate, to slow, to ugly-up proceedings, and for most of the first period they succeeded.
But there is a hardness to this VfB Stuttgart side that was absent a year ago. the captain has been magnificent as a pivot, shielding a back three that has conceded only once in its last five outings, and when the moment came — a ball into the box, a brush of the arm, referee Halliwell's whistle — Catovic did what Catovic does.
Two-one, three points, and now to SC Freiburg. We have said it before and we will say it again: beat the leaders at home on Saturday, and this season becomes something we will still be talking about twenty years hence.
When I think of this club, I think of Gerd Muller — and of the afternoons that made the rest of us care. — The Editor
Of the Championship
The Stuttgart faithful, and a season that matters.
There is, as ever, much to be said about VfB Stuttgart. The club plays in Bundesliga, and this paper proposes to say some of it, at length.
This paper has never pretended to the sort of cool that our broadsheet rivals affect. We are supporters first, correspondents second; and we would ask of our readers only that when the whistle sounds on Saturday, you remember what it took to put Die Roten where they are now.
— The Editor, Stadium