Sheraldo Becker and the sudden demise of Union Berlin
The Köpenick club have picked up just two wins from their first nine Bundesliga games and at the heart of their troubles is a forward that is struggling to live up the remarkable highs of last season.
Union Berlin have a number of issues that seem to be anchoring them towards the bottom of the Bundesliga table, but managing director Oliver Ruhnert was adamant that one problem in particular was haunting his team more than any other. Forget the additional midweek fixtures across Europe, pay little heed to a scattergun approach to the transfer market, ignore the high-profile defenders sitting on the sidelines in a bad mood. The Köpenick side have so far managed just two wins from their first nine league games because they can’t stick the ball in the back of the net.
"We keep talking about the same things, we don't score goals and the idea of scoring goals is missing at the moment,” lamented the Union boss. “We're not getting into the finishing situations, that's something we have to think about. We're not moving forward well, we're not getting out of midfield and we're too wide up front. That's why we don't get into the situations we need for our switching game.”
This, perhaps to no great surprise, felt like a remark aimed at one player in particular: Sheraldo Becker. Having bagged no less than 12 goals in all competitions last season, the Suriname international has so far failed to find the back of the net after 441 minutes of league football this season. Nor has he looked like scoring. So much so that last season’s talisman was pulled off in the 78th minute, after Urs Fischer gave up on hoping for a miracle.
It’s one thing for new signings like Kevin Volland or David Datro Fofana to flop, but it’s another thing entirely for a vital player like Becker to go from hero to zero in such a short period of time. And while Union’s issues this season are undoubtedly a multi-faceted mess of converging factors, there is a sense that had Becker begun this season as well as he finished the last one, Fischer & Co. would have been able to paper over the cracks and fixes minor issues while the team continued to march on and grind out results. So what’s gone wrong for Becker and how much is he to blame for Union’s poor start to the season?
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