Perhaps, in years to come, it will be looked upon as one of the anomalies in the history of collectible football toys. When the DfB commissioned Lego figures of Germany’s Euro 2016 squad, the list was compiled months before Jogi Löw made his final choices. So alongside Manuel Neuer, Thomas Müller and Mario Götze was a figure of the injured Marco Reus, for example.
There is also one in the collection that sticks out if you look at Lego’s squad today, or if you’re browsing for spares on eBay – that of No23, one Max Kruse. Dropped by Löw last March following a string of off-field controversies including (but not limited to) leaving €75,000 in cash in the back of a taxi after a poker tournament, nightclub rows and his then-coach Dieter Hecking chiding him for excessive Nutella consumption, it seems astonishing that Kruse was ever in the mix to go to France.
Then again, maybe not. His steady recovery of his form since returning to Werder Bremen, his first professional club, reached some sort of apex on Saturday afternoon when he rattled in four second-half goals to cap a notable turnaround for his team at relegation strugglers Ingolstadt, after Werder had trailed at the break. He became the first Werder player to score four in a match since the legendary Frank Neubarth – like Kruse, a Hamburg native – did so against Fortuna Düsseldorf in 1986.
It is no flash in the pan, either. The goals took Kruse’s goal tally to 13 in 19 starts this season, nine of which have been scored in the last seven games. If you tack on assists, he has been directly involved in 15 of Werder’s last 29 goals. It’s impressive whichever way you look at it.
Individually and in a team context, it’s all coming together for Kruse. This result – after they trailed twice to Maik Walpurgis’ side, desperate for points to keep hope of a great escape alive – took Werder’s unbeaten run in the Bundesliga to 10 games, with eight of those having been wins. Werder have only managed more points in the Rückrunde once since the introduction of three points for a win – in 2003-04, when they last won the title. These are heady times.
It’s especially so when you bear in mind how the season started; four successive defeats to get the campaign under way mushroomed into eight defeats in the opening 11 games. At many other clubs the coach, Alexander Nouri, would have been toast and was perhaps saved partly by the fact the new sporting director, Frank Baumann, was just getting comfortable in his own seat.
Nouri is on his third life, given his tough start after taking over from Viktor Skripnik in September and that his position was again the subject of intense speculation at the start of this calendar year, with Werder beginning 2017 with four straight defeats, even if there was merit to be gleaned from the performances. Now, he can do little wrong. He is in his element on the touchline, and looked unusual out of his ubiquitous tracksuit and in a smart shirt and chinos as a studio guest on Saturday night’s Das Aktuelle Sportstudio. He still had his trainers on, though.
His, and Werder’s, recovery to the brink of an unlikely European place is fast becoming the story of a congested middle of the Bundesliga table full of them. The weekend win put them into sixth, and a Europa League spot, and even if Freiburg’s win over stumbling Leverkusen bumped them back down a place, there’s really something happening here.
This surge from a difficult start mirrors Kruse’s own journey since returning to the Weserstadion as well. After injuring his ankle in pre-season, he didn’t manage to make his second debut for the club until November, and it hasn’t been easy to get here. Yet now, for the Werder fans sat in the front row of the ZDF studio for Nouri’s appearance, the wooden angel in a green-and-white strip that they clutched could even be mistaken for a decent representation of their star striker.
Kruse, for his part, tried to puncture the hype after the game. “The whole team deserves the credit,” he smiled. “I don’t want to stress about it.” The ‘it’ was the question of a possible Germany recall, with Löw still not having found a definitive go-to for his centre-forward position. What is plain is that Kruse has found somewhere where he is happy, and feels less judged, perhaps, than before.
Werder have been less hawkish with him than previous employers, certainly, with a prang on the way back from a night out in Hamburg before Christmas overlooked. “I need an environment where I feel comfortable,” he said on Saturday, and he certainly has that.
Nobody is expecting him to really become that angel – “Kruse,” wrote Kicker on Sunday, “would not be Kruse if he didn’t go dancing from time to time in the quieter town of Bremen” – but seeing him in the white of Germany, even in Lego form, doesn’t seem that daft any more.
Talking points
• It was the Battle of the Borussias at, er, Borussia-Park, as Mönchengladbach took on Dortmund ahead of a big week in the DfB Pokal for both – Gladbach host Eintracht Frankfurt in Tuesday’s first semi, while Dortmund go to Bayern Munich on Wednesday. After the off-field trials of recent weeks, Thomas Tuchel’s side looked reinvigorated and far nearer their best selves, as they swarmed over Gladbach with what Das Aktuelle Sportstudio referred to as “ein Monsterpressing”. It still took Raphaël Guerreiro’s late header to seal it but Dortmund are now up to third.
• Not that Hoffenheim are too downcast about being leapfrogged. Kerem Demirbay’s coolly-taken stoppage-time equaliser at Köln means they are assured of competing in Europe next season for the first time in the club’s history. We’ll be seeing a lot more of Julian Nagelsmann’s increasingly familiar smile, which had another outing after full-time.
• Carlo Ancelotti may have scoffed at talk of a crisis after Bayern came from behind twice to squeeze out a home draw with Mainz, but it was far from the strong response to their Champions League exit that he demanded. After Bojan Krkic had a first Bundesliga goal gifted to him by an errant Arturo Vidal pass, Ancelotti frequently looked furious on the touchline, and on the brink of losing his famous sanguine. Thiago Alcântara’s second equaliser saved a point, but Wednesday’s semi is suddenly even more important.
• Eintracht head to their big moment in the last four full of vigour after ending a run of 10 winless Bundesliga games against struggling Augsburg. Niko Kovac and company trailed for almost 70 minutes but two from Marco Fabián sent them into their biggest game of the season in good heart.
• There was no respite for a few of the big boys at the bottom, with Wolfsburg spurning a host of chances at Hertha before going down to a Vedad Ibisevic winner, before Leverkusen were properly dragged into trouble by substitute Pascal Stenzel’s late winner for Freiburg. That makes a total of six points from seven matches under Tayfun Korkut since the former Hannover boss was appointed to a combination of surprise and indifference. Dare Leverkusen let things drift with them only four points ahead of the relegation play-off spot, or could there be another change?
• Another one in that category is Hamburg, beaten at home by Darmstadt in their first loss at the Volksparkstadion since November. The relegation of Torsten Frings’ side should be confirmed next week, but they dodged a second straight match point with relative comfort after inspirational captain Aytaç Sulu and Felix Platte scored twice in three second-half-minutes. Der Dino, on the other hand, will be jittery before next week’s six-pointer at Augsburg.
Results: Freiburg 2-1 Bayer Leverkusen, Schalke 1-1 RB Leipzig, Eintracht Frankfurt 3-1 Augsburg, Bayern Munich 2-2 Mainz, Ingolstadt 2-4 Werder Bremen, Hamburg 1-2 Darmstadt, Hertha 1-0 Wolfsburg, Mönchengladbach 2-3 Dortmund, Köln 1-1 Hoffenheim.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bayern Munich | 30 | 56 | 70 |
| 2 | RB Leipzig | 30 | 25 | 62 |
| 3 | Borussia Dortmund | 30 | 30 | 56 |
| 4 | TSG Hoffenheim | 30 | 25 | 55 |
| 5 | Hertha Berlin | 30 | 3 | 46 |
| 6 | SC Freiburg | 30 | -14 | 44 |
| 7 | Werder Bremen | 30 | -1 | 42 |
| 8 | Cologne | 30 | 6 | 41 |
| 9 | Eintracht Frankfurt | 30 | -2 | 41 |
| 10 | Borussia M'gladbach | 30 | -5 | 39 |
| 11 | Schalke 04 | 30 | 4 | 38 |
| 12 | Bayer Leverkusen | 30 | -3 | 36 |
| 13 | Mainz | 30 | -10 | 33 |
| 14 | Wolfsburg | 30 | -13 | 33 |
| 15 | Hamburg | 30 | -25 | 33 |
| 16 | Augsburg | 30 | -20 | 32 |
| 17 | FC Ingolstadt | 30 | -21 | 28 |
| 18 | Darmstadt | 30 | -35 | 21 |
