Preparations for the Rückrunde also involve a training camp in Tenerife. However, the first two weeks start with indoor football, which is really popular in the 80s and 90s. The shindig involves 18 tournaments when the teams were able to qualify for the finals that saw the first DFB Indoor Cup (also called the Hall Masters). The big finals tournament is held in Frankfurt. Every club has to have played in at least two tournaments. A complicated system saw eight teams qualify for the DFB Indoor Cup.
So-called assessment points determine qualification with final places and points from the last three seasons plus the first half of the current campaign are taken into account. The individual tournaments are given a values rating, which in turn depends on the assessment of the participants and individual tournaments. Winners and finishers were awarded place points. The total of all the numbers produce the final points tally, which is reflected in the table. From those, five other teams qualify alongside the hosts Eintracht Frankfurt. Ten Bundesliga teams have already ruled out participation in the DFB Indoor Cup as they prefer training camps in preparation for the Rückrunde.
Bayer 04 take part in three tournaments – in Hanover, Dortmund and Herne. Although the tournament in Hanover was not recognised as a qualifying tournament the Hall Masters.
The team set off for Hannover and Herne on Friday 15 January 1988. The team fail completely in Herne on that Friday losing all three group matches against DSC Wanne-Eickel (1-2), Westfalia Herne (1-2) and Hamburg SV (2-3). The other but the team in Hanover do not do much better – 2-2 against TSV Havelse, 0-0 against Hannover 96 (Reserves) and a 4-1 win against ASC Nienburg. Saturday sees the two 'indoor specialists' Knut Reinhardt and the second team player Dieter Regh arrive in Herne from Hanover to give the team support in the important tournament. That is the play-offs, the quarter-finals for us against the top team from the other group, in this case Rot-Weiss Essen. We inflict a 5-1 defeat on Essen. The semi-final brings revenge against Hamburg SV with a 3-2 victory but then we lost 6-3 to Wattenscheid 09 in the final. The team in Hanover finishes in a disappointing fourth place.
The tournament in Dortmund follows a week later. Again we reach the final but suffer a heavy 5-2 defeat to VfL Bochum. At the end of the day, the two second places are not enough to qualify for the DFB Indoor Cup. Preparations for the Rückrunde, and obviously the UEFA Cup quarter-final against Barcelona, begin with a flight to Tenerife on 25 January.
Michal ‘Katsche’ Kadlec was born in the Czech town of Vyskov on 13 December 1984. At the age of six, he moved to the Pfalz region in Germany with his parents because his father Miroslav accepted an offer from FC Kaiserslautern where he played as a sweeper for the Red Devils for eight years. Katsche learned German in the kindergarten at Kaiserslautern. And he played football at an early age: first as a teenager at SV Alsenborn and then for FC Kaiserslautern.
Show moreHelmut Röhrig was born in Leverkusen on 14.12.19 44. He learned to play football at Bayer 04 and became a Middle Rhine champion with the U19s in 1963 finishing ahead of FC Köln. He played in the second team at the Werkself in his first year in senior football.
Show moreBernd Schuster was born in Augsburg on 22.12.19 59. His first club as a teenager was local side SV Hammerschmiede. From that time there was an anecdote that a former groundsman told us when we had a Pokal game in Augsburg in 1993. Bernd was always the first person on the training ground after school. With a running track around the pitch and goals without nets, the young Bernd practised free kicks and corners in the knowledge that he had to collect the ball himself. In that way he not only practised his technique but also worked on his stamina as a teenager.
Show moreWolfgang ‘Wolle’ Rolff was born on 26.12.1959 in Lamstedt, a community in the Lower Saxony administrative district of Cuxhaven. He started his football career at TSV Lamstedt. He moved on to OSC Bremerhaven with the U17s as he trained to be a retail salesman. He started in senior football at the Nordsee Stadium in Bremerhaven.
Show moreThe 1969/70 season begins with four defeats for Bayer 04. That puts the team coached by Theo Kirchberg bottom of the table. The Werkself only lift themselves out of the relegation zone on Matchday 10 with a 4-2 away win in Marl-Hüls. The position in the table improves over the course of the season.
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