Best and worst XIs

It's traditional for Deutsche Welle to present its best and worst teams at this point in the season, as the Bundesliga's professionals clean their boots and store them away for the winter break. This year, however, rather than passing this dubious honour to one of our resident soccer experts, we've asked all our analysts to contribute a section each to the best and worst XIs.

Tackling the best and worst defenses will be Nick Amies, while Paul Chapman chooses the classiest and crummiest midfielders and the most dangerous and most profligate strikers have been picked by Jefferson Chase. The best and worst XI's will be overseen by coaches hired and fired by Matt Hermann.

THE BEST XI: DEFENSE (Nick Amies)

Having an unbeaten team sitting on top of the league at the half-way point in the season makes it easy to pick the majority of the best defense in the Bundesliga. Bayer Leverkusen's keep Rene Adler takes the No. 1 jersey in our Best XI for his consistency and his role in keeping Leverkusen's goal difference down to 35 for and 13 against. Adler's growing confidence and competence has also seen him stake a claim for the keeper's shirt in Germany's World Cup team.

The Best XI's back four features Adler's Leverkusen team-mate Sami Hyypia, who has shown that a change is as good as a rest. Contrary to the belief that his legs may not have been up for another season in the English Premiership, Hyypia has been a player reborn. The big Finn has shown that wealth of experience and mastery of positioning are qualities ideally suited to a leader charged with marshalling a young team chasing the Bundesliga title.

Hyypia is joined at the back by Werder Bremen's Naldo, Hamburg's Jerome Boateng and Schalke's Marcelo Bordon. Naldo remains one of the Bundesliga's most competent ball playing defenders, combining solid defensive qualities with a midfielder's eye for a pass; Boateng has proved to be a versatile stopper for HSV and has shown enough to make the leap to the full Germany squad this season, while Bordon has played a strong role in Schalke's impressive defensive record this season, keeping them tied with Leverkusen as the league's most parsimonious defense.

BEST XI: MIDFIELD (Paul Chapman)

Leverkusen's great start has been punctuated with displays by precocious youngsters and 19-year-old Toni Kroos in particular has caught the eye. The on-loan Bayern Munich attacking midfielder has started to add goals to his threat and could return to Munich in 2010 as one of the players who denied his employers the title. Another young tyro given license to maraud in the center of the park is Dortmund's Turkish international Nuri Sahin. Back at BVB after a loan spell with Feyenoord, Sahin is again showing the flair which alerted many a European club when he burst onto the scene in 2005.

Mesut Oezil looks and plays like someone with ten years more experience. The Werder Bremen star is a livewire attacking midfielder who thrives in Bremen's cavalier approach. So far this season, Oezil has contributed six goals to Werder's tally and got off the mark with the senior Germany team in this his full international debut season. Completing the midfield, we have Ze Roberto, another player reborn. Few would have expected Ze to stick around after leaving years of success at Bayern behind but his performances for Hamburg – before getting injured – showed a new hunger and his goals and assists helped HSV challenge at the top.

BEST XI: ATTACK (Jefferson Chase)

Completing the BEST XI's 4-4-2 formation are strikers Stefan Kiessling and Lucas Barrios. Leverkusen's Kiessling is having the season of his life so far, leading the Bundesliga with his team and the scoring charts with 12 goals. The rangy forward is enjoying a prolific partnership with Patrick Helmes and has earned himself a recall to the Germany squad on the back of his stunning form.

Dortmund's Barrios is one of the main reasons why BVB are enjoying their best season in many a year. The Argentine has hit nine goals so far and has given BVB the cutting edge they have been missing for a long while. It remains to be seen if Barrios can keep them in the top four or higher for the rest of the season but his form to date suggests he'll at least try.

BEST XI: COACH (Matt Hermann)

Knowing what Felix Magath is capable of - winning a Bundesliga title with an off-brand club like Wolfsburg - his good start at Schalke may not surprise you. Look again.

He inherited a side that had looked old, disorganized and out of ideas after last season’s disastrous Fred Rutten experiment, and has steered them into second place at the break. Despite his protests to the contrary, they are a legitimate threat to win the league.

He’s prodded last year’s underachieving veterans into some of their best form in years (Bordon, Kevin Kuranyi) or dropped them from the squad (Levan Kobiashvili, Gerald Asamoah); he’s found raw gems in his own youth squad (Joel Matip, Carlos Zambrano) or poached them from local rivals (Lewis Holtby and Christoph Moritz from Aachen, Lukas Schmitz from Bochum); and he’s given a coherent shape to a side that struggled for years to find an identity.

They look a good bet to qualify for the Champions League, and if (this is a big if) top-class players like Jermaine Jones or Christian Pander can come back from their long-term injuries to anything like top form, Magath may go down in history as the man who broke Schalke’s 52-year-long jinx.

Click below to continue with the Worst XI of 2009/10 so far...

WORST XI: DEFENSE

Solid as a sponge, the Worst XI team is built on the shifting sands of the defensive unit which features Jens Lehmann in goal, with Andreas Wolf, Edson Braafheid, Sascha Riether and Marcel Maltritz across the back.

Lehmann has proved yet again that while his record shows that he can actually be a goalkeeper when he wants to be, most of the time he would much rather be a five-year-old child. Unpredictability can sometimes give a goalie an edge but in Lehmann's case it has pushed him over that edge and into the abyss. While not 100 percent to blame for Stuttgart's imploding season, answers as to where the other five percent came from can be sent in on a postcard.

It's hard to pick out the weakest link from Nuremberg's Wolf, Bayern's Braafheid, Wolfsburg's Riether and Bochum's Maltritz. All have shown inadequacies and failings to meet the criteria and their ineptitudes are so closely tied on the embarrassment scale that separating them and handing them the title is almost impossible. Which is why the award for most ineffectual defender goes to the eight-legged gaff machine known as WolfBraafheidRietherMaltritz.

WORST XI: MIDFIELD

The spine of the Worst XI looks more than a little rubbery and the likes of Maniche, Caio, Paul Freier and Thomas Hitzlsperger combined look unlikely to stiffen and offer any resistance when opposing a more adventurous and creative quartet.

Maniche has contributed nothing to FC Cologne's season to date. A highly decorated player with league titles in Portugal and Italy and Europa league and Champions League winners' medals, it seemed as though Cologne were getting a hugely experienced midfield general when he joined from Inter Milan. What they apparently got was a disinterested donkey looking for a quiet pasture to spend his remaining days. At least Cologne didn't buy Caio or they would have been in bigger trouble. The most expensive player in Eintracht Frankfurt's history, Caio is one of a rare breed – a Brazilian playmaker who can't make plays.

Buying expensively from foreign markets is always a risk which is why VfL Bochum thought they were playing safe buying the experienced Paul Freier. Freier, who began his professional career at Bochum before enjoying more success at Bayer Leverkusen, is hardly an unknown quantity at the Ruhrstadion but the Paul Freier of 2009 may as well be a stranger or the evil twin of the original. Legs and motivation seem to have been misplaced on the short journey between his last two clubs.

Making up the quartet is Thomas Hitzlsperger, another player who seems to have lost his mojo. The midfielder formerly known as The Hammer is currently trying out new nicknames such as The Chocolate Teapot (as in 'as useful as a…') and That Bloke Who Used to be Good. Gone are the explosive shots, the commanding presence and the ability to kick a ball straight.

WORST XI: ATTACK

Leading the non-firing line of the Worst XI are Miroslav Klose and Marek Mintal. Both former Bundesliga top scorers are having nightmare seasons so far. Bayern's Klose has been creaking and stumbling around as a shadow of his former self – and that's just on the way from the dressing room to the bench. When he does eventually get a game, he has looked off the pace and profligate in front of the sticks. When he has notched a goal, he seems to be celebrating out of relief, a fact that only compounds the belief that he's in decline.

Mintal doesn't have the excuse that he's slipping down the pecking order at his club behind a host of international strikers and world class players. He plays for Nuremberg after all. The midfielder-cum-non-striking-striker has managed just one goal so far this season as Nuremberg become mired in an early relegation battle. Mintal has yet to show any signs that he has the stomach for another fight.

WORST XI: COACH

Look, there are a number of reasons to feel sorry for how things went for Markus Babbel in this foreshortened half-season at the helm in Stuttgart. The club sold his best player in Mario Gomez and bought poorly, bringing in the out-of-sorts Pavel Pogrebnyak and the thus-far woeful Aliaksandr Hleb. The DFB's ruling that he had to get his coaching badges in order meant he spent as much time on the road or in Cologne in the classroom as at the Stuttgart training ground. The way he accepted his sacking was astonishingly gracious – appearing at a press conference with his executioner Horst Heldt and reminding the club's unruly fans that this was not a life-or-death issue, especially in light of what German football had gone through with Robert Enke's suicide.

Yes, Markus Babbel is a class act, and will probably be a good coach in the future. But none of this means he did a good job coaching Stuttgart this year. His initial self-assurance that he could handle coaching classes and actual coaching evaporated when the going got tough, and he'd quit the course by mid-October. In addition to a nearly-intact roster from last year, a number of promising youngsters like Sebastian Rudy and Timo Gebhart have come through, adding to his choice in midfield. And in the end, Babbel had a whole summer to devise a new way of playing without Gomez, the former tip of his spear. Whatever he came up with wasn't working. The best coaches have a plan B, even a C.

FOR THE RECORD:

Jefferson's Best XI: Adler, Boateng, Bordon, Hyypia, Badstuber - Ze Roberto, Misimovic, Özil, Ivanschitz - Kiessling, Barrios.

Jefferson's Worst XI: Lehmann, Braafheid, Andreas Wolf, Barzagli, Mavraj - Maniche, Podolski, Moreno, Hitzlsperger - Klose, Mintal.

Paul's Best XI: Adler, Castro, Hyypia, Naldo, Beck – Kroos, Sahin, Ze Roberto, Özil – Kiessling, Kuranyi

Paul's Worst XI: Lehmann, Riether, Maltritz, Wolf – Schaefer, Maniche, Teber, Kacar, Dabrowski – Grafite, Sestak

Nick's Best XI: Adler, Bordon, Boateng, Naldo, Hyypia,- Kroos, Ze Roberto, Özil, Müller - Kiessling, Barrios

Nick's Worst XI: Lehmann, Wolf, Braafheid, Riether, Maltritz – Maniche, Podolski Hitzlsperger, Freier – Klose, Raffael.

Matt's Best XI: Rost, Castro, Naldo, Hyypia, Boateng – Oezil, Ze Roberto, Sahin, Kroos – Kiessling, Farfan

Matt's Worst XI: Lehmann, Stein, Janker, Barzagli, Rozehnal – Hleb, Nicu, Maniche, Mintal – Wichniarek, Klose


Author: Nick Amies with contributions from Paul Chapman, Jefferson Chase and Matt Hermann.
Editor: Andreas Illmer