Home

Navigation

---

Bangkok 2007

German All Stars – All Smiles in the Land of Smile The Stars on Tour is always a pleasure and beginning of April it was time again to travel to Bangkok for the legendary Far East Tournament. It was a good, solid and hungry squad that left Singapura full of hopes with Air Asia flight FD 3504 on April 6th. After the usual Bangkok-welcome-traffic-jam the Stars set out for the first night in the City of Angels. Starting off with a wonderful dinner in Soi 5 They spread their wings and explored the true night life of this tropical paradise. No prisoners were taken and so the whole Crew danced into the wee hours in Spicy-Style. The Friday was the day of sight seeing. Our Hanseat Herman asked the 1 Million $ Question very early in the Morning: “Fahrn wir mit ‘em Boat?” and we did. After a lovely Tuk Tuk ride the Stars enjoyed the ancient Kings Palace with some senior insights from the former East German Honor Guard Joerg. From there it was time to go on the “Boat” and of course the next question was whether there was a Klo-a on the Boat? It was not and so the Stars floated through the Klongs of Bangkok and met 3 good beardy American friends in the Snake Farm. The afternoon was Chill Out and the Eastern Trio Infernale enjoyed this in a place where thy were singing the famous song: Schawallalllalllalllalllallla … !!!

The evening saw the draw and the German All Stars Team was put into Group 1 – which meant to play the beautiful first game on Saturday Morning @ 09:00 AM. So the Mannschaft went out for further bonding and some came back to the hotel just on time for the departure to the pitch.

The first game was against a Team from Phuket and the Stars started out – wie die Feuerwehr. After 4 Minutes it was already 2:0 after Papa Heusselsche and Young Star Cylle had scored beautiful goals. Coach Klinsajew was asking for more, as he knew that 3 goals would earn us an extra point. It was again Cylle with a beautiful volley from the edge of the box, who made it 3 and made the Stars smile. This 3 – 0 with its 4 points should prove to be crucial as from there the Stars were fading a bit. The second game with already 35 Celsius saw Captain Hook inviting the Farangutans to score the 1:0 with a very gay header and to make things worse it was Katze Klaus who broke a rip during the desperate attempt to safe the shot. The Stars fought back and had a couple of chances but it was not meant to be. The Captain made another interesting foul in the midfield and got a yellow card, which meant he had to leave the pitch. With only 10 Men the Stars fought bravely but still lost the game. In the 3^rd game against the German All Stars Hong Kong, we were clearly the better team, but could not get the ball into the back of the net and so we settled for a 0-0 draw. With 5 points from 3 games everything was still possible in the group and so we had to get at least 1 point out of the last game against the Red Stars Kuala Lumpur. With a lot of bravery this was achieved, but we had to pay a high prize for it - Our midfield engine Kerim broke his nose in a incidental collision. So after 4 games we had 6 points, a broken rip and a broken nose, but we came in 2^nd in the group stage. Sascha, Joerg and Kerim went still with football shoes and shin pads straight into the Bangkok General Hospital, for an Xray, which proved that the nose was broken and surgery was required. While Kerim prepared himself mentally for the operation the rest of the Gang went for a Solidarity-Praying event in a traditional Thai Temple called Kollllloze. The spirits were good, the prayers were heard and afterwards the Team went to visit the German-Patient in a very relaxed and depressurized mood. Kerim’s operation went well. When the whole team came to celebrate his new nose in the hospital around 11pm, he was still recovering and so the only thing we could do was a team picture with the beautiful nurses and an interesting sign: “nothing through mouth”. Sascha and Hermann stayed in the hospital and saw a quite damaged, but somewhat happy Kerim. A long and full day came to an end with a traditional Noudle Soup at Sukhumvit Road.

On Sunday Morning the Team looked great and was out for trophies now. It was the most crucial game of the tournament and it was against another German Team – Shanghai Krauts.  While the Captain had played bad on Saturday – it should get worse on Sunday. The game was only 3 Minutes old when he without any reason hammered the ball into the own net. Everybody including our opponent was stunned and only Hanseat Hermann came around properly by saying – Schoenes Ding Du !!!! Anyway the team fought back and Papa Heusselsche nicely converted a handball-penalty. So it was 1:1 and everything still out to play for. A few minutes before the end of the second half the Krauts made it 2:1 and everybody thought that was it. But: weit gefehlt. With only seconds to go the Hanseat Hermann made his first goal for the German All Stars (after countless attempts) and everybody agreed his header was: ein schoenes Ding Du !!!! So it came down to penalties !!! Katze-broken-rip-Klaus was up for it and he came very close to save the first 2 penalties – but it did not work out. Somewhat tragically we lost the penalty shoot out and quite a bit of sadness laid over the team as with this the best we could achieve was the 9^th place. Legendary Coach Klinsajew still knew how to get his Stars going again and by shifting the utmost dangerous Captain into the midfield in the Quarter Final for the Plate Trophy the Taipei Red Lions were wept away by the Swiss Legend Rino. Scoring 2 beautiful goals was enough to send us through for the legendary semi final against the Swiss Club Singapore. While the Swiss played some good football, the German All Stars hang on to it and came out with a 0-0, which again meant penalty shoot out. This was the time when heroes were born. The new goalie Balkan-Krachi was up for it and while Rino and Thomas nicely converted the Swiss missed one penalty. The Germans offered the honor to one of their finest – Steffen Haudrauf, who without shoes made a great shot, which unfortunately was evenly nice saved by the Swiss Goalie. So we had to count on Krachi and: - he delivered. With a great jump he saved the 3^rd Swiss penalty and so the German’s were through to the Final for the Plate competition. Even though this was not the big final, it was still a good achievement and it earned the Team the one and only game on the ‘show pitch’ in front of ten thousands of screaming supporters.  The final was to be played against the Manila Nomads and even though the legs very tired and heavy the German Team delivered a proud and brave performance. With a lot of spirit they went up after a beautiful goal by Hermann Monster, who wiped the goalie away with great power and scored into the empty goal.  The 2^nd half saw the Nomads coming all over us, but still the defense stood tall until with a Sunday shoot they equalized. Who now thought heads went down was wrong. Putting the last power reserves on the table Papa Heusselsche started an explosive SV Martinshoehe-Run in our own half and he was unstoppable until a Nomad axed him down – in the box. So it was penalty and Mr.Voice coolly converted.  A few more minutes to go and German tanks held on to it. Then it was over and we had won the Plate Final. The Host Team – German All Stars Bangkok went on to win the Tournament and so it was the German All Stars Double that was up for celebration.  One thing the Singapore German celebrated even more was the come back of Kerim, who had charmed all the Doctors and especially nurses to let him go. Still looking quite a bit damaged but happy – he took the honor to receive the Trophy out of the hands of the German Ambassador. Now the Party could begin.  A great band, a great tractor and a lovely Cocktail bus made it an unbelievable cool Party and mainly the 2 German Teams were poking and dancing and singing the night away. “We did it our way” was Franky Sinatras line, which ended a great day at the pitch. From there we went back into town and back into the party mode. Everybody gave everything in CM2 and then Spicy proved to be the final destination.

Monday was the day to go back. With a trophy, a broken nose, a broken rip, a couple of broken hearts and a lot of good memories we arrived back safely in Singapura.

A great trip – a great bunch of guys - German All Stars Singapore !!!

Wohl an Wohl auf !!!

Joerg

---