Bundesliga butchers: Where on Earth do Bayern expect to play Draxler?

The Bavarians have admitted their interest in bringing the Schalke star to the Allianz Arena, but have absolutely no need for the 20-year-old

COMMENT
By Enis Koylu

It was news that surprised few, but shocked so many. When Matthias Sammer publicly expressed Bayern Munich’s interest in signing Germany wonderkid Julian Draxler, there was a sense of deja vu to it all; the Champions League holders attempting to lure yet another top Bundesliga talent to the club. 

On the face of it, the German champions moving for Draxler makes perfect sense. Though a Schalke boy through and through, the 20-year-old has always seemed destined for bigger and better things and Bayern would help him achieve his goals. 

However, scratch the surface and it is all cynically familiar. Bayern have long made a habit of monopolising the top talent in Germany, signing the best players not just to strengthen their own squad, but to weaken that of potential rivals. 

BAYERN'S BIG BUNDESLIGA BUYS
Player	From	Year	Fee
Pizarro	Bremen	2001	€8.2m
Kovac	Leverkusen	2001	€8.25m
Ballack	Leverkusen	2002	€6m
Ze Roberto	Leverkusen	2003	€12m
Lucio	Leverkusen	2004	€12.5m
Klose	Bremen	2007	€15m
Podolski	Koln	2007	€10m
Gomez	Stuttgart	2009	€30m
Neuer	Schalke	2011	€22m
Gotze	Dortmund	2013	€37m
Lewandowski	Dortmund	2014	Free

 President Uli Hoeness, who made his fortune in the meat trade, has taken to butchering his side's rivals.

They may have a fantastic history of breeding players of their own; Franz Beckenbauer, Gerd Muller, Paul Breitner and more recently Bastian Schweinsteiger and Philipp Lahm all emerging through the ranks in Munich and into the annals of German football history. But, the Bavarians have been massively supplemented by players and coaches poached from domestic competition. The likes of Lothar Matthaus, Michael Ballack, Lucio, Ze Roberto, and of course Mario Gotze, who have been captured from their nearest rivals. Even sporting director Sammer himself.

The teams left reeling from their aggressive transfer policy are numerous: Werder Bremen, Bayer Leverkusen and even Karlsruhe built fine teams, but their best players - the Miroslav Kloses, Ballacks and Oliver Kahns - were plundered by Bayern. 

Eintracht Frankfurt will lose one of their key players, Sebastian Rode, to the German champions in the summer and club president Heribert Bruchhagen is in no doubt as to what attracts them to the Allianz Arena. 

“Why does Sebastian want to go to Bayern? My God, these are young people. They can earn four times as much money at Bayern as they can here. End of story.” 

And now they are taking their old policy to new levels. Robert Lewandowski is set to join Gotze at the Allianz Arena in the summer from Borussia Dortmund, effectively hammering the final nail into the coffin of the team who stole Bayern’s German hegemony between 2010 and 2012. 

But while Gotze was to an extent required to ease the creative burden on Franck Ribery and Arjen Robben, and Lewandowski will be an upgrade on Mario Mandzukic, it is hard to find any on-field reason to move for Draxler. 

The Gladbeck native’s performances this year show that he still has a lot to learn and would struggle to challenge more experienced campaigners for a regular spot in the team. He deserves a club that would treat him with patience if he chooses to leave the Veltins Arena. Gotze, Ribery, Robben, Thomas Muller and Toni Kroos would all be ahead of him in the pecking order. What’s more, if Bayern were to make another big-name signing this summer, they would be far better off bolstering their defence than their attack.

Moving to Bayern is far from a guarantee of success, too. Manuel Neuer has blossomed into one of the world’s best, and most decorated, goalkeepers since switching to Munich, but Lukas Podolski - though his medal collection grew - found himself desperate enough to return to struggling hometown club Koln.

Until recently, the Bundesliga boasted something La Liga, the Premier League and Serie A could not: genuine unpredictability which could see a minnow stun everyone and claim the title. But this has now ended and it has become the most predictable league in Europe.

And football needs competition to thrive. In the business world, companies who try to introduce a monopoly on a product are duly punished, just as Microsoft were by the US government in 1998. 

The Bundesliga has grown into one of the most popular leagues in the world in recent years, but Bayern - while breaking no rules - are going a long way to destroying the product they were instrumental in creating by eliminating all of their rivals. 

Signing Draxler, a player they hardly need for sporting reasons, would see them descend into self-parody and represent another nail in the coffin of what was once a brilliant league.

Miniature Messi: Introducing new Barcelona wonderkid Alen Halilovic

The Dinamo Zagreb wonderkid has announced that he will be signing for the Catalans on a five-year contract. But just how good can the teenager become?

PROFILEBy Luke Matthews

It was a winter of discontent for Barcelona in the transfer market. Not only did they not sign anyone, but the chaos surrounding Neymar's transfer last summer saw their president resign and the club accused of tax fraud allegations that they continue to deny.

However, a month on from the madness of the January window, the Catalans have got back into the swing of poaching the best talent on the planet by swooping for Croatian wonderkid Alen Halilovic in a deal worth an estimated €10 million from Dinamo Zagreb.

Although the move is yet to be officially confirmed by either club, the 17-year-old took to social media to share his joy with the world that he has signed for Gerardo Martino's men.

"Thanks Dinamo Zagreb for everything!!" the three-times capped Croatia international wrote on his Instagram account. "My first club and biggest love!! Now is time to move on to Barcelona."

Halilovic has undeniable talent and, considering Dinamo's modest financial status, it was no surprise that the likes of Real Madrid and Manchester United have been scouting him since he emerged as a star-in-making 17 months ago.

His debut off the bench in September 2012 in a 3-1 win over bitter rivals Hajduk Split made him the youngest ever debutant in the Croatian top flight at 16 years and 102 days. Ten days later the attacking midfielder broke another record - this time becoming the league's youngest ever goalscorer after netting with a superb Lionel Messi-esque chip.

Despite the clamour of interest, it was Barca who convinced him to part with Dinamo in June - when his first professional contract ends - to give him the chance to link up with the likes of Lionel Messi in the distant future.


Miniature Messi | Halilovic has been likened to the four-time Ballon d'Or winner and future team-mate
Far from concidentally, the left-footed youngster's pace, dribbling ability, deadly finishing and deceptive strength considering his small frame have earned him comparisons to Barca's Argentine superstar - perhaps prematurely.

Barca are certainly getting a player with huge potential, a player who could develop into a world class attacker, but the fee of €10m is in danger of immediately piling the pressure on the teenager's shoulders.

Since he first shone at Dinamo early last season, there have been further flashes of brilliance but Halilovic has struggled to maintain consistency in a team where, in recent years, the likes of Mateo Kovacic and Milan Badelj dazzled at a similar age.
 
Still, Halilovic has an ability that only the top attacking players in world football possess: to ghost past players with ease in the final third. It’s this talent which undoubtedly persuaded Barca to fork out such a sum for a teenager despite already having what appears to be a conveyor belt of talented attackers emerging from their B team.

If Halilovic is to be a success at Camp Nou, Barca must keep the pressure off the young Croatian. This points to immediately putting the player to the B team to continue his development, alongside players of a similar age and talent.
 
Dinamo could never offer Halilovic a similar alternative - he embarrassed opponents at times representing Dinamo’s youth teams but the pressure, at times, has proven a little too much in front of the roar of the Maksimir Stadium. With that in mind, B team football could prove to be the perfect tonic for Croatia’s biggest talent.

Upon his emergence from the Dinamo youth ranks, there was genuine belief within the club that Halilovic was the best player in a generation to emerge from a club which has produced the likes of Luka Modric and Niko Kranjcar. Now he begins his road to leaving those names in the dust and living up his miniature Messi moniker.

Salman Toor: Using his canvas to alter reality

Artist melds consumer and social fantasies perpetuated with a Renaissance-era spirit of light, technique and idealism.

LAHORE: 

Every time he works in the studio, he is compelled to create a masterpiece, like it’s the last painting he’ll ever paint. This is Salman Toor, a painter who graduated from The Pratt Institute with an MFA in 2009.

Traditional storytelling devices attract him — such as the way narratives unfold in the fiction of Daniayal Mueennuddin, the 19th century French writer, Guy de Maupassant, children’s storybooks and illustrations, and the Renaissance compositions of colourful Venetian painters like Paolo Veronese. He doesn’t expect the common reader to know the significance of these painters, but it might be enough to know that they were Christian painters who rediscovered the Roman love affair with the human body. They created decorations for the churches and palaces of Venice during the economic boom, now known as the Venetian Renaissance.

The main challenge for Toor is to use the sensual qualities of paint and the human body in a context larger than itself. Toor says, “When I paint, one of the things I think about is the ubiquitous (and quite tiresome, given the prevalence of Smartphone use) role of photography in today’s world.”

He believes that painting can only be relevant if it transforms our perception in a way that photography possibly cannot. The way the world is edited when reality is translated by a draftsman on to a plain surface, is where the magic of figurative paintings resides. A painter can exercise the kind of total tyrannical control over the image, in a way that photography cannot.

Skill is usually considered quite a useless thing in today’s art world (with a few famous exceptions). What matters most is the gesture, the concept, the bare distillation and ambitious scale. “In that respect I feel like I have more in common with a talented local carpenter than I do with a contemporary visual artist (except for my education). Uncomfortable situations that describe the identities of participants of our society are particularly fun to paint for me,” he says.

In his paintings, poverty, glamour and beauty oscillate between caricature and reverence in a land of daisies and four-leaved clovers. He often uses smiling faces in his work, because sometimes images or poses are culled from advertisements, but when they’re translated in paint, the images that look mundane and forgettable acquire a foreboding quality under the veneer of frivolity.

He tries to meld consumer and social fantasies perpetuated by the mass-media of urban India and Pakistan, with a Renaissance-era spirit of light, technique and idealism in order to present a unique vision of the complexities and exchanges between South Asian popular culture and the historical traditions of Western idealization.

Maid with flowers 

One of his recent paintings, Maid with Flowers, has been made using oil on canvas. It’s a maid with a vase of flowers on a tray with teacups, walking in an imaginary cartoony landscape. You can see a glimpse of it at the bottom. The landscape consists of rolling hills, poplar trees and a cosy little hut, similar to art seen on truck-art and calendars with Swiss landscapes. The landscape represents the vulnerability of the liberal upper and middle classes, whose wonderland is as thin as a soap bubble. Toor says, “This story gives me a chance to combine two very different worlds: one of all the possible implications of the servitude of an attractive servant girl, and the other of the world of Alice’s adventures in wonderland, Hansel and Gretel, Jack and the Beanstalk, and The Little Mermaid.”

Schoolgirls

Schoolgirls was made using Charcoal & Ink on Paper. With this drawing, Toor started out wanting to do a cartoon of a schoolgirl, but it developed into an actual person. The idea of a schoolgirl in this country has been transformed in the past few years.  She is the essence of all things vulnerable and innocent. She is a popular victim of the tyranny and terror of religious fanatics. This is the feeling about a schoolgirl he wanted to convey in the picture. He wanted her to be like Little Red Riding Hood in a seemingly safe setting with cute little flowers and streams and old trees. Toor said, “In this way I hoped to give a sense of her cluelessness with regard to the rites of passage of a potentially dangerous place.”

Toor is inspired by the best moments of over 300 painters, whose works are primarily in museums in Europe and the United States — Anthony Van Dyck, Rubens, Velazquez, Titian, Bernardo Strozzi and Veronese, to name a few

Health experts emphasise media's role in spreading polio awareness

PHOTO: FILE

KARACHI: Health experts believe that the role of the media is crucial when it comes to reporting on polio, for if done effectively, it can help understand where the problems actually exist.

This was the consensus at the one-day training held for journalists on reporting polio. The event, held at the Pearl Continental Hotel on Thursday, was organised by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in collaboration with the Extended Programme on Immunization (EPI) Sindh and the World Health Organization.

Explaining the precarious situation and threats of polio cases in different parts of the country, especially in Karachi and Peshawar, experts urged that it was the need of the hour to involve all the people of Pakistan to save the country’s future.

“Pakistan’s position was much better than India in 2010 and the neighbouring country has almost overcome the situation. We can do it too,” stressed Dr Iqbal Ahmad Memon, the president of Pakistan Pediatric Association Centre. “The EPI centres should be visible and accessible to the general public as they could voluntarily visit them.”

Appreciating the government’s efforts and responsibility, Dr Memon said that Rs17,000 to Rs18,000 are being spent on each child, saying that over 98 per cent of the issue has been resolved across the world since 1988 due to vaccination.

“If there is no polio case reported for three consecutive years, it means that the country is polio-free,” he said.

Dr Durenaz Jamal, the EPI Sindh’s deputy programme manager, admitted that 2013 was not a good year for Sindh.

“At least ten polio positive cases surfaced and all possible efforts are being taken to overcome the situation this year,” said Dr Jamal.

Briefly elaborating on the situation across the province, Dr Jamal said that the Sindh government was seriously considering replicating the polio drive in Peshawar.

“Eight cases were reported in Karachi in 2013 as compared to zero case in 2012 and nine cases in 2011,” she briefed.

“The responsibility of the media is very important and without understanding the issue, reporting on sensitive issues like polio is very difficult,” said Badar Alam, the editor of Heraldmagazine. He advised participants not to rely on single sources, saying to be accurate, brief and clear on every story.

Tahira Yasmeen, a social worker who works in Karachi’s high risk area, Gadap, appealed to the media to report positively instead of creating hype. “This will only disturb our efforts. We need to take extra care when reporting polio stories.”

An office bearer of the Rotary International, Asher, said that his organisation was involved in polio eradication tasks in various parts of the country, including the country’s borders as well as Sindh’s.

According to him, the implementation plan was being enforced in Sindh’s Mirpurkhas, Karachi’s Gulshan-e-Iqbal Town, as well as Peshawar, Nowshera, Quetta, Loralai and Turbat

2,000-km march for 'missing' persons nears end

Relatives of missing persons pass through a road during Long March rally. PHOTO:PPI

RAWALPINDI: After 2,000 gruelling kilometres on the road, a band of families led by a 72-year-old are due to reach the end of their protest march over missing relatives in the federal capital on Friday.

They are the relatives of people who have disappeared in Balochistan, allegedly at the hands of the country’s security services.

The marchers, led by a retired banker known as Mama (uncle) Qadir, hope to present a petition to UN officials in Islamabad and meet foreign diplomats to raise awareness of their cause.

“We want to tell (the world) that people are being kidnapped every day in Balochistan, districts are being bombarded and almost every day we are receiving mutilated bodies,” Qadir told AFP on the road close to Rawalpindi.

“We have no more hope in the Pakistani government, which is why we want to talk to international organisations, so they can apply pressure.”

Qadir’s son Jalil Reki, a member of the Baloch Republican Party which is suspected of links to the armed insurgency, was found shot dead in 2011 after going missing.

The marchers set out from Quetta last October, walking first 700 kilometres to Karachi, on the shores of the Arabian Sea, before turning their steps northwards to Islamabad, nestling in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Balochistan, the size of Italy and rich in copper, gold and natural gas, is Pakistan’s largest but least populous province.

It is also the least developed, which has exacerbated a long-running ethnic Baloch separatist movement that wants more autonomy and a greater share of its mineral wealth.

The latest armed insurgency rose up in 2004 and separatist groups still regularly attack Pakistani forces.

Rights groups accuse the military and intelligence agencies of kidnapping and killing suspected Baloch rebels before leaving their bodies by the roadside.

According to Human Rights Watch, more than 300 people have suffered this fate – known as “kill and dump” – in Balochistan since January 2011.

The security services deny the allegations and say they are battling a fierce rebellion in the province.

The Supreme Court has also been investigating cases of missing people in Balochistan, issuing warnings to the government to recover these people.

Aga Khan compares Sunni-Shia conflict to Ireland

The Aga Khan, spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims, addresses a joint session of Parliament as House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer listens in Ottawa February 27, 2014. PHOTO: REUTERS

OTTAWA: The hereditary spiritual leader of the world’s 15 million Ismaili Muslims Thursday compared a conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims to Ireland, urging the West to engage both branches of Islam.

Speaking to both houses of Canada’s parliament, the Aga Khan said tensions between the two denominations “have increased massively in scope and intensity recently and have been further exacerbated by external interventions.”

“In Pakistan, Malaysia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan it is becoming a disaster,” he warned.

To help bring an end to the strife in these countries, the Aga Khan said “it is important for (the West) to communicate with both Sunni and Shia voices.

“To be oblivious to this reality would be like ignoring over many centuries that there were differences between Catholics and Protestants. Or trying to resolve the civil war in Ireland without engaging both Christian communities.”

Highlighting the span of the crisis, he said: “What would have been the consequences if the Protestant-Catholic struggling in Ireland had spread across the Christian world as is happening today between Shia and Sunni Muslims in more than nine countries.”

Canada is home to approximately 100,000 Ismaili Muslims, who found refuge in this country after being expelled by Ugandan President Idi Amin in 1972.

The Aga Khan himself was made an honorary Canadian citizen in 2010.

Bradford students union wants IK to sacked ??

Serious discontent has grown among students of the University of Bradford over the constant absence of its vice chancellor Imran Khan.

Khan has been so embroiled in Pakistani politics that he hasn’t attended a single graduation ceremony since 2010.

The University’s student union has now floated a motion to drop the cricketing legend turned politician in Pakistan from the highest post. The motion raised by Mohsin Tanveer will be voted on by the student’s union next month.

Tanveer said, “Many students are unhappy with the fact that they have been denied the opportunity to engage with the chancellor on a regular basis.”

Khan was appointed to the post in December 2005 and is the fifth chancellor of the University since its inception in 1966.

The University defended Khan with its chief executive Professor Brian Cantor who runs the university asking students to show sympathy.

Cantor said, “Our chancellor has a major political role in Pakistan, a country which has serious problems with terrorism, education and poverty. While I understand that it is frustrating for students that Khan has not attended an award ceremony at Bradford for some time, I have urged students to be sympathetic to the situation in Pakistan and the responsibility Khan has to improving the state of the country. I have appealed to the better nature of our student body to be more supportive of the work Khan has to carry out as a politician.”