European Overview

I haven't done an update on the various European teams I follow for a while and with new seasons getting ready to kick off I think now is a good time to take a trip around the continent.

Blackburn Rovers: Blackburn has certainly moved up to my "second" team after seeing them a couple of times in person.  In 2017-18 they promoted back to the Championship and last year they settled into mid-table for most of the season.  A late season dip had some fans a little worried about relegation but they turned it around and finished 15th.  In the offseason they've improved the squad and somehow kept star attacking midfielder Bradley Dack.  I think hoping for a playoff spot is a stretch but a finish just behind that (7-10th) is not out of the question.  They open the season on Saturday hosting Charlton Athletic.

Queen of the South: The Doonhamers had a rough year last season, with manager Gary Naysmith parting ways with the team before the relegation playoffs.  Yes, relegation playoffs.  Despite having one of Europe's leading scorers (Stephen Dobbie, look it up) the team suffered through a two month losing streak after the holidays.  They finished 9th but won the relegation playoff and stayed in the Championship.  Dobbie is back this season with a new manager and a rebuilt team, but the early start has not been great.  They were eliminated from the League Cup in the first group stage this month.  Their first league game is Saturday at Arborath.

CD Tenerife: The Chicharreros had a pretty typical season for them, settling in above the real relegation danger in the Spanish Segunda division but not much higher than that.  14 of the last 21 seasons have gone about the same way.  Tenerife brought in defensive reinforcements this offseason, including former Barcelona keeper Adrian Ortola to deal with their 50 goals allowed last season.  They start the season at Real Zaragoza in two weeks with their big home derby against Las Palmas on Sept 8th.

TSG Hoffenheim: In Julian Nagelsmann's last season in charge of 1899 the team stumbled a bit.  a solid 9th place finish is nothing to sneeze at but it was certainly a drop from the 3rd and 4th places of the prior two years.  They also finished 4th in their group in the Champions League, which meant a direct drop out of Europe, not a shift to the Europa League.  This season the biggest change is at manager, with wunderkid Nagelsmann moving on to RB Leipzig and being replaced by former assistant Alfred Schreuder.  After finishing with the 3rd best offense in the Bundesliga last season the team has doubled-down on the attacking strategy, bringing in multiple wingers to bolster the attack.  A little good news for German football fans today, after this coming season the Bundesliga rights will move from FOX to ESPN+.  Hoffenheim start the season with an away cup match at Wurzburger on the 10th and their first league match at Eintracht on the 18th.

English Non-League: After two trips to England where I learned a bit about non-league football, and actually saw a non-league game, there are two non-league sides I'm keeping my eye on, in different but equal divisions.

In the National League North I'm watching Chester FC.  Last season was the first back in the North for the Blues after relegation the prior year and after a quick start they finished just short of the promotion playoffs in 9th place.  They had a run of bad luck with weather and cup matches rescheduling a number of games early in the season (a bad storm all but destroyed the operations center of the stadium when the roof failed, forcing many postponements) leading to a very congested fixture list and a reallocation of resources.  This season they have some new investments lined up and there is hope that they'll be pushing for promotion back to the National League.

In the National League South I'm watching Wealdstone FC, who I saw play at home in April.  That loss to Dulwich Hamlet seemed to end their playoff hopes but a great run in the last couple games, including a miracle set of 4 results on the last day got the Stones into the promotion playoff.  As the bottom seed they had a long road to promotion but their miracle run continued for a bit.  They first went to Bath and won 3-1, then went to Woking at took a 2-0 lead in the first half.  The magic ran out at halftime though, with Woking scoring 3 times in the last 15 minutes of the match and knocking Wealdstone out of the playoffs.  There's hope for a return trip this year however.

So that's the circuit, from Dumfries to Tenerife to Hoffenheim.  Who knows, maybe I'll add a Greek team soon. :D

Overseas Season Round-Up

Its a little late due to everything going on, but its time for the season round-up for the clubs overseas that I follow.

Queen of the South: As reported earlier QoS stormed through their season, being the first team in the UK to clinch a championship and the promotion that goes with it.  They also won the Ramsdens Cup over 1st Division Champions Partick Thistle.  Queens received awards galore including Manager of the Year and Team of the Year.   As soon as the offseason hit though, the negative side of their success appeared.  Leading scorer Nicky Clark will not be going up with the team as he was bought by another Second Division team, a little club you might of heard of called Rangers.  Just yesterday manager Allan Johnston agreed to a contract with Kilmarnock of the Premier League.  An impressive move by a guy who has 1 year (admittedly a great year) of managerial experience.  Next year the Doonhamers are back in the First Division after their one year absence.

Blackburn Rovers: A bad season for Rovers after last year's relegation saw them go through 5 managers and barely avoid a second straight drop, finally finishing 17th in the Championship.  Venky's ownership continued to spin the club out of control, leading to as many off-field problems as on-field problems.  Leadership seems to be getting sorted out but the club still has quite a financial crisis which will tie their hands for the coming season.  The bumpy ride isn't over yet.

CD Tenerife: After two seasons in the third division and coming oh-so-close to promotion last year they got over the hump this year.  They won their group by 3 points and then won their promotion playoff 3-2 on aggregate over L'Hospitalet.  Facing Alaves for the Segunda B championship they lost by a two-leg score of 3-2.  Next season its back to their normal stomping grounds of the Spanish Segunda where they'll meet their Canary Island rivals Las Palmas.

Melbourne Victory: The Victory bounced back from a rough season with a 3rd placed finish in the A-League behind Western Sydney and Central Coast, who ran away from the rest of the pack.  3rd place was good enough to get the A-League's AFC Champions League qualifier spot for the 2014 competition.  Much like MLS, the A-League's season is offset from much of the rest of the confederation which leads to a big delay between champions league qualification and actually playing.  In the A-League playoffs the Victory won their first round battle before losing to eventual champions Central Coast in the semis.

TSG 1899 Hoffenheim: This is a new club I've been rooting for, thanks to my sister and brother-in-law visiting that part of Germany a couple of years ago and bringing a scarf back from the club for me.  Hoffenheim was backed in 2000 by one of the founders of SAP, at the time they were playing in the 5th division of German soccer.  Between 2000 and 2008 they earned 4 promotions to end up in the Bundesliga. The club is also the home of 2 young German-born American Nats players, Daniel Williams and Fabian Johnson, and a 3rd American, Joe Gyau, who has played for the U.S. youth national teams.  This year Hoffenheim struggled in the Bundesliga, going through 4 different managers, ending in 16th place and in the relegation playoff.  In the playoff they beat Kaiserslautern 5-2 to keep their place in the Bundesliga for the 2013-14 season.

So, two teams promoted and none relegated, not a bad season.  Next year there's 2 top division teams (Melbourne and Hoffenheim) and 3 second division teams (Queen of the South, Blackburn, and Tenerife).

Relegated

My Overseas Roundup of the teams I follow is coming a bit late this year because I had to wait for the Spanish promotion playoffs to finish today.  Unfortunately its pretty much universally bad news.

Blackburn Rovers - EPL - Finished 19th of 20.  In the biggest failure of the year Blackburn Rovers was relegated out of the EPL.  The same year a 5th team finally joined the ranks of EPL winners Blackburn were relegated for the second time since the founding of the EPL, the only EPL champion ever to be relegated (but when the only other ones before this year were Man U., Arsenal, and Chelsea that's not a huge surprise).  This was Venky's first full season in charge of Rovers and they proved they don't have a clue of what they're doing.  My fear is that this coming season will be the first of many in the Championship.  Unlike last time we were relegated we won't bounce back up the next season.  Let's just hope our plummet stops in the Championship!

Queen of the South - Scottish First Division - Finished 10th of 10.  Money finally caught up to the Doonhamers.  They were barely able to keep the team full-time and had to slash all of their existing contracts to so that.  They put everyone, including the manager, on one-year deals in order to remain financially viable and from an economic perspective it worked, but at the cost of our First Division spot after 10 years.  The club has announced they plan to stay full-time in a bid to move back up to the First Division ASAP.  They turned down investment from an outside company, deciding that they club should remain in the hands of local Dumfries fans.  The club will be moving training back to Dumfries from Glasgow (where its been for the last few years) and are laying new surfaces for the stadium and the practice field this offseason.

CD Tenerife - Spanish Segunda B - Finished 2nd of 20.  The Spanish Segunda B is split into 4 20 team groups with promotion playoffs for the top teams.  Tenerife was unlucky to be draw into the same group as Real Madrid's reserves and not surprisingly the royal backups ran away with the group.  The group winners only have to win one home-and-home playoff series to clinch promotion (which Real Madrid B did) while the 2nd-4th placed teams in each group had to win 3 such series.  Tenerife won the first 2 and went into today's promotion playoff final at home with a 1-0 deficit to Group 2's 2nd placed team, Ponferradina.  Unfortunately despite having the home advantage they lost the game 2-1 and will remain in the Spanish Segunda B for another season.

Melbourne Victory - Australian A-League - Finish 8th of 10.  This was expected to be a rebuilding year for the Victory, and it was.  After hanging around the edge of the playoff spots for the first 2/3rds of the season a series of poor results in the final stages found them dropping to 8th and staying there for the last third of the year.  Melbourne were 8 points out of a playoff spot, missing them for the 3rd time in their 7 year history.  The A-League is going through a lot of financial issues right now so its hard to tell what kind fo season to expect next year.

Rough Overseas Season Ends

Long time readers will remember my Weekend Roundup posts on the 4 overseas teams I follow. This past offseason was very busy for the Rapids so I stopped doing the regular updates, but I figured I'd do an end-of-season Roundup on them.

Queen of the South - Scotland Division One

QoS had a rough year due to the bath weather in Scotland. The team had 11 different matches in December and January postponed due to snow and frozen pitches. They managed just 3 matches in that time period which put a financial hurt on the club that they managed to struggle through, then it put a competitive hurt on the club in the back half of the season as all those games had to be made up. The team managed to make the final of the ALBA Challenge Cup (Cup competition between all DI-DIII teams), which was originally scheduled for November 28th but due to weather and rescheduling didn't get played until April 10th, which Queens lost 2-0. The team finally finished 5th in Division One, a solid finish given their congested schedule.

Blackburn Rovers - English Premier League

Rovers started out well, sitting in mid-table and getting an influx of new cash as the team was sold to the owners of Indian chicken processor Venky's. Fans saw them as the white knight riding in to bring Blackburn to the next level, but they immediately became the villains as they fired manager Sam Allardyce and replaced him with assistant manager Steve Kean in early December. No cognizant explanation was given and after that point Blackburn plunged down the table, highlighted by a 7-1 loss at Old Trafford. Blackburn later had to watch United celebrate their EPL title at Ewood Park after a 1-1 draw in the penultimate game gave the Red Devils the championship but did not assure Rovers of safety. That didn't happen until the final week when Blackburn went to Wolves and took a 3-0 lead in the first half, only to hold off a furious comeback and win 3-2, assuring themselves of another year of top-flight football as they finished 15th.

CD Tenerife - Spanish Segunda Division

After dropping from La Liga last season Tenerife had high hopes of bouncing right back up. Unfortunately just the opposite happened. CDT lost 6 of their first 9 games and didn't win until game 10. A good streak gave a little hope, but 8 and 10 game winless streaks doomed the team. Tenerife had 3 manager changing this year, which didn't help. With one game left in the season the chicharros are already relegated to Segunda B for the first time in 24 years with a guranteed 20th placed finish (out of 22 teams). They have a chance to salvage something out of this season this weekend as they travel to Las Palmas for the Canary Islands derby. The teams tied in Santa Cruz de Tenerife earlier in the season so the winner on Saturday, if there is one, can claim dominance of the islands until the teams meet again. Unfortunately Las Palmas will not be going down with CDT, so they'll be able to flaunt that until Tenerife recovers.

Melbourne Victory - Australian A-League

The Victory, coming off a disappointing loss in last year's final to their rivals Sydney FC, was hoping to continue their dominance of the A-League. Unfortunately it appears that they tried to push their aging team one too many years before rebuilding as the team suffered from mixed results all season, highlighted by captain Kevin Muscat committing an unforgivable red-card tackle (similar but worse than Mullan's) that got him banned for 8 weeks until the end of the regular season. He announced his retirement at the end of the Asian Champion's League, in which the Victory finished last in its group. Melbourne managed to finish 5th and qualify for the playoffs, but they were bounced in the first round by Gold Coast United. The team seems to have started a rebuilding process before next season.

Why CD Tenerife?

Another in my occasional series of posts about why I follow the teams I do. I've done previous posts about the Colorado Rapids, Queen of the South, Blackburn Rovers, and Ebbsfleet United. This time around we'll look at CD Tenerife of the Spanish Segunda (Second Division).

I'm sure most people are wondering why a random team from the second division of Spanish soccer has popped up on my radar. I don't speak Spanish, no Americans have played there, and I don't have any Spanish heritage. The one thing that separates Tenerife from every other European team is that I've seen them play live in Europe.

In May of 2007 I was able to take a Transatlantic cruise on the Disney Cruise Line's Disney Magic because my mother-in-law works for the Mouse and they offered a special deal to their employees and families. This trip is also where the picture of me and the monkey on the sidebar comes from, that's one of the Barbary Apes of Gibraltar. Our first stop after crossing the Atlantic was in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, home of CD Tenerife, and it happened to be a Sunday which was game day.


View of Santa Cruz from the ship



Image of the ship from the waterfront


Before we left I can contacted members of Armada Sur, the English-speaking supporters club of CDT and arranged to meet them before the game. After spending the morning looking at the local flea market/garage sale I headed up the hill to the Heliodoro Rodriguez Lopez Stadium while my wife and her parents went on a excursion to Mount Teide.


Heliodoro Rodriguez Lopez Stadium from down the hill



A closer view of the stadium


I stopped by the vendors outside the stadium and picked up a scarf and jersey then wandered to Armada Sur's bar of choice to meet up with the group and watch the game with them. After some pre-game drinks we headed inside.


Armada Sur's pre-game festivities



A look from the supporter's seats


Tenerife's opponent was Malaga CF from the mainland, coincidentally enough the favorite Spanish team of another Rapids fan, so I was hoping for a victory in order to rub it in. Tenerife got off to a good start, with a goal from a corner kick to take an early lead.


Corner kick that results in a goal



Armada Sur and Frente Blanquiazul (among others) celebrating


It was all downhill after that though, as CDT's star keeper had an off day, spilling a shot he should have held which led to a rebound goal, and not covering a ball he should have stopped which resulted in the winning goal. Still the fans weren't too hard on him, apparently he was responsible for keeping them in many games that season and everyone has an occasional off day.

Afterwards I had to race back to the ship, getting on board only about 30 minutes before the final boarding call, so I wasn't able to partake in the post-game misery drowning. It was a great day though, and I'd love to be able to visit again.
Since then I've followed CD Tenerife through the Armada Sur forum, Colin Kirby's game writeups, and Andy Woolley's Internet fanzine. We've started out well this season, maybe this is the year we return to La Liga?

And just to prove I'm not making it up ;), here's a picture of Armada Sur shot from another part of the stadium. You can see yours truly in the blue shirt and sunglasses in the center