Trequartista: Injury Bingo and Swabian talent

It's been a long time since I did a player analysis and how about doing one now, as a part of this week's Trequartista. Now, what will this week's feature be about? Well, it will simply be about our site, the international break and its boredom and about a certain very interesting player who has caught the eye of our editors during this season so far. So grab your electronic device of choice and your most comfortable furniture and enjoy yourself by enlightening yourself by reading this week's Trequartista.

The dire international break. What can we do when we're bored? It's a hard question to answer, but we've been active at the site. By bringing in a couple of new regular writers and by recording yet another interesting podcast we've been more active than most teams in Bundesliga have been. Add editor Ali's birthday to that and it's been a week full of joy and prosperous work. However, before we can begin to count ourselves as an established site, we still need at least one writer at the Serie A-section and at the Ligue 1-section to complete our setup. It's what is needed, but it's hard to find. Now, I specialize in German football and can't allow myself to shift focus as I find my own knowledge and views on Fussball too valuable to the site, the same goes for every writer we have. They shouldn't shift focus as they write about the things they're good at. Therefore, we need new writers for Serie A and Ligue 1. If you know someone or if you yourself would like to join our marvellous team, contact us at @freshgegenpress or contact me at instafalk@outlook.com and we'll sort something out. 

So, the international break. This dire part of the season that is so full of boredom for most football fans. To make this part a bit more fun, here are a few tips: 

1. Injury bingo. 
This sounds bad and cringe, but could be fun. Sure, it's not ethically correct to joke about injuries, but to lighten your week up, you can afford some time in the ethical grey areas of football. Do like this: Choose a few teams and then make a bingo chart out of the players of that team. Then if a player gets injured you cross his box and when you get five in a row, you win. What happens then? .....you scream "BINGO"... come on people, keep up. (This game could and should hopefully go on for a few international breaks)

2. You could get extremely engaged. 
If you're really bored and your own national team plays horribly (like mine always does), then become a hipster for a week and choose a national team and become extremely engaged. Try to figure out tactics, find new exciting players etc. It could be fun for a while, at least it should make the week entertaining enough.

3. Write! 
Preferably for us, but there are many sites looking for new talent and writing really does make time move a bit quicker, especially if you write about something interesting or that really interests you. 

Berkay Özcan:

The player I was talking about is Berkay Özcan of VFB Stuttgart, the turkish playmaker who has started six games in Zweite Bundesliga so far and has amassed three assists from his  role as a number 10. His age? 18. Yep, this lad is a proper talent, an uncoveted star. Even though he is still unpolished and rash, his talent makes him a key player for the promotion candidates Stuttgart. Born in 1998 and with a history at Karlsruhe, this young talent has lots of potential and experience. He came through the ranks at Karlsruhe and was signed by Stuttgart in 2013 when they spotted his natural ability on the field. Since he has advanced through the ranks at the Swabian club and is now one of the biggest talents in 2. Bundesliga. To his three assists in six games for Stuttgart you can add his goal and assist in VFB's first cup game of the season, in which he starred. Have you heard of him? Probably not. Had I heard of him before my Stuttgart-supporting father mentioned him? Nah. 

Berkay Özcan was born in Karlsruhe and, much like Mesut Özil and Yunus Malli, has dual citizenship. Him being born in Germany with Turkish parents makes him eligible to play for both national teams, even though he has chosen the Turkish youth teams so far. This means that the German youth set-ups will look to include him in their next qualifier to try to lure him to play for Germany. 

Enjoy the games of the weekend, enjoy the Bundesligas and most importantly, enjoy the Kovac-inspired crash of Bayern München at Waldstadion, Frankfurt this Saturday at 3.30 CET. 

Ciao.

Axel Falk,
editor, fussball fanatic and avid believer that Angela Merkel is the saviour of Europe.