Werder’s Worries

Bremen's relief at ending their five-game losing streak on Friday was palpable.

“We're happy to have gotten the three points,” young star Marko Marin told reporters after Bremen beat Hertha Berlin 2-1. “After this sort of negative run, it's important for our self-confidence.”

Those were pretty tame words coming from a team that most Germans associate with attacking swagger. But they accurately reflect the point Werder have reached in what was supposed to be their comeback season.

In the five year stretch between 2003 and 2008, Bremen were clearly Germany's second best team, finishing no worse than third in the standings and winning the league once. But the wheels came off last season, despite Bremen winning the German Cup and reaching the UEFA Cup finals. The team drifted down to tenth in the standings.

Past Bremen squads demolished weak opposition. On Friday, Werder were arguably lucky to eke out a home victory against the league's cellar dwellers, as Hertha had what looked to be a regular goal ruled offside.

“Overall, it was an up-and-down match,” Bremen coach Thomas Schaaf admitted to reporters. “But the team showed it has the desire, and that's the most important thing.”

You don't even need to read between those lines to realize that Schaaf is concerned with team morale. And his worries start with the player that lit up the Bundesliga in the first half of the season.

Losing touch

Ahead of this season, the big question for Bremen was whether they could compensate for the loss of star playmaker Diego, who transferred to Juventus. That question seemed to have been answered in the positive: 22-year-old midfielder Mesut Oezil went on a tear, scoring six goals and contributing nine assists as Werder stormed to within one point of the league lead after round 13.

That streak led Oezil to be voted the league's top player in the first half of the season. And it attracted the interest of every European powerhouse side from Barcelona to Manchester United.

That attention seems to have turned the youngster's head. Against Hertha, he was nearly invisible, picking up an assist through a lucky deflection but otherwise failing to put his stamp on the match.

Oezil's contract runs to 2011, but indications are that he sees his future with a bigger European club. Thus far, he's refused Bremen's offers of an extension.

“If Werder insists, I will fulfill my contract,” was all Oezil would say in January, the last time he spoke about the subject, adding that his priority was to play for a Champions League club.

Bremen's chances of becoming one aren't good at the moment. With Oezil's productivity declining, Werder are currently eleven points behind third-placed Schalke.

Defensive deficiencies

Another emerging problem could be between the posts.

Tim Wiese got off to a career season in 2009 and earned a call-up to the national team - a long-overdue call-up, as the keeper, who's never been known for his humility, likely felt.

Since then, though, Wiese has been overreaching. An utterly misguided foray out of his area cost Bremen points two weeks ago in their 4-3 loss to Mönchengladbach, and an ugly bobble led to Hertha's lone goal on Friday.

Wiese's inconsistency is just one among many elements in Bremen's defensive difficulties. They've yet to find an adequate left back, and veteran holding midfielders Torsten Frings and Tim Borowski are starting to show their years.

The result is that Werder are regularly conceding soft goals - the performance of their back four against Gladbach bordered on hara-kiri. And questions are being asked about the league's most established coach-sporting director duo.

Eternal seller

The main components of Werder's run of excellence were manager Klaus Allofs' ability to spot young talent and Schaaf's knack for quickly integrating new players into his attacking squad.

But aside from Marin and Oezil, Bremen haven't had much luck in the past couple of years. Allofs' foreign acquisitions have been flops, and their only top striker, Claudio Pizarro, is 32 years old and increasingly injury-prone.

The team declined to buy in reinforcements at the winter break, and if the club sells Oezil this summer, as most people expect them to, it will cement Bremen's reputation as a second-tier outfit that top talents use as a springboard to move on to true title contenders.

Werder are currently celebrating their 111th anniversary, and club bosses say they hope Schaaf, the Bundesliga's longest-tenured coach, will spend the rest of his career as a club.

But the coach has also come in for some unusual criticism. Midfielder Jurica Vranjes, who left the club this winter, termed Schaaf a great coach but a “catastrophe” as a human being, and other players have barely been able to conceal their grumbling at their bosses' lack of aggression on the transfer market.

Schaaf enjoys a unique measure of job security in the Bundesliga, and rightly so. In more than a decade in his post, Schaaf has built the team into a favorite among football fans throughout Germany, to say nothing of the locals who pack the Weserstadion - Bremen's drab riverside ground - week after week.

But another season finish outside the top three would severely undermine Werder Bremen's status as Germany's always entertaining second-best. And it could signal the beginning of an end of an era.

Author: Jefferson Chase
Editor: Matt Hermann