News and Notes

By: Chris | March 26th, 2008

Slow news week on the club front in the Bundesliga with the international break and HSV having crashed out of European competition.

Here’s a quick list of Hamburg guys who are playing for their countries this week:

Raphael van Der Vaart, Nigel de Jong, Joris Mathijsen - Holland (v. Austria)

David Jarolim - Czech Republic (v. Denmark)

Mohammed Zidan - Egypt (v. Argentina)

Vincent Kompany - Belgium (v. Morocco) [Have I ever mentioned that I think Vincent Kompany is Da Man?]

Guy Demel - Ivory Coast (v. Tunisia)

Anton Putsilo - Making his senior debut for Belarus against Scotland. Atta boy!

-There’s a story in Bild today (original here; translated here) about the contract statuses of keeper Frank Rost and striker Ivica Olic. Rost and Olic arrived at HSV during the January transfer window in 2007–Rost from Schalke, Olic from CSKA Moscow–when HSV sat last in the Bundesliga table. The arrival of both coincided with Hamburg’s reversal of fortune last season, and now Rost and Olic want their contracts extended. Olic expressed his desire to stay with the club long term back in January, but club officials are leaving the decision to extend Olic with the new manager, whoever that may be. Rost’s case is slightly different in that the club knows he is the long term solution at keeper and Rost has proclaimed that he wants to end his career at HSV, but it appears that they will defer to the new manager as a courtesy in his case as well. All this even though Rost is the best keeper in the Bundesliga this season, and no manager in his right mind would get rid of him.

-Joris Mathijsen will have plenty of time for his injured hand to heal. He will be in front of a DFB disciplinary committee today for the straight red he received in Saturday’s match against Wolfsburg. Mathijsen and Wolfsburg striker Grafite got into it with about 10 minutes remaining in the match and both were sent off. He’s expected to be suspended for the next 3 matches (vs. Bielefeld, at Stuttgart, vs. Duisburg). These will be the first fixtures he’s missed since coming over from Alkmaar in 2006.

[For those of you scoring at home, that's 3 posts in 2 days--a new record for the Hamburg Offside. Now back to work!]