Golden Gladbach

Lucien Favre didn’t quite know what to say on German television during a post game interview. True, the French-Swiss’s German isn’t the greatest, but what really had Mönchengladbach’s coach at a loss for words was where his team was after the final game of 2011: fourth in the league, and in the quarterfinals of the German Cup. Not bad for a team that was fighting relegation seven months ago.

If Favre and his players were trying to prove the point moving into 2012 that they had left the memory of that team long behind them, knocking the defending German Cup champions out of the competition in the round of 16 was an excellent way to do it.

In the big picture, Gladbach’s 3-1 over Schalke was just the third win of six that would be required to win the German Cup. But it proved - like several other league games had in previous months - that Mönchengladbach is not the same group of pushovers from last year.

Early lead

Gladbach took the lead against Schalke after 18 minutes. Striker Marco Reus took a pass off his chest from Patrick Herrmann on the right side, then passed into the middle at the top of the penalty box. Kyriakos Papadopoulos the deflected it out to the top of the area, where Juan Arango sent it in past the left post for Gladbach’s first goal.

Neither team was particularly dominant in the first half, but the advantage was clearly Gladbach’s. Schalke’s few runs never amounted to anything that could trouble Gladbach’s keeper, Marc-Andre ter Stegen.

"We played, without reason, a first half that I would have rather not even seen," said Schalke’s assistant coach Seppo Eichkorn, who stood in for head coach Huub Stevens, who was attending to his ill mother. "The positive thing was that at the half, we were only behind by one."

A major turning point in the match came shortly after the start of the second half. Schalke striker Klaus-Jan Huntelaar got into a bit of a scuffle with Gladbach defender Dante. The conflict itself was unremarkable, but Huntelaar had some words with the ref and his assistant, which got him booked and sent off.

Without him, Schalke was missing a key piece of their offensive puzzle, not to mention being down a man for an entire half.

Hanging on to the end

It wasn’t long before Gladbach had utilized their extra player to create a scoring opportunity. Reus froze Schalke’s entire line and their keeper with a shot from just outside the area that put Gladbach up 2-0 in the 56th minute.

Schalke’s finest period in the game came in the 10 minutes after Julian Draxler took advantage of a flubbed save by ter Stegen in the 70th minute.

Mönchengladbach wrapped it up three minutes from time when a long ball from Arangos to Reus put him in a one-on-one situation with Schalke keeper Lars Unnerstall. Reus evaded a diving Unnerstall, who had come out of his box to meet the attack, and Reus jogged the ball right into the goal to make the final score 3-1.

The road to the final

Wins like this against a team like Schalke - much like their 1-0 win over Bayern Munich to start the league season - put further distance between the Gladbach of the past and the Gladbach of the present. In the draw for the next round of the German Cup that followed Wednesday’s matches, Mönchengladbach was paired with Hertha Berlin for a match on Berlin’s home turf.

That’s a challenge that Mönchengladbach is up for. Hertha plays in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, the site of the German Cup final. It is not a stretch to say that Mönchengladbach’s trip there in February won’t be the last in 2012 for the league’s best turn-around team.

Up next: Hertha Berlin

Hertha Berlin advanced to the next round to face Mönchengladbach thanks to a 3-1 win over fellow Bundesliga side Kaiserslautern. It was a breath of fresh air for the team, which went through a turbulent separation from its former coach Markus Babbel just three days ago.

Under the new leadership of coach Rainer Widmayer, Berlin took the lead just before the end of the first half on a goal from Adrian Ramos. Kaiserslautern equalized after six minutes in the second half, but eight minutes later Pierre-Michel Lasogga put it away for good with Berlin’s second goal of the game.

Patrick Ebert added another for good measure in injury time.

"It was a tough game, as we expected," said Widmayer afterward. "But the longer it went, the better it got."

Fourth division team shocks Bundesliga’s Mainz

The biggest surprise of the evening was an upset of Bundesliga side Mainz by Holstein Kiel from the fourth division.

Kiel did get a little help from Mainz striker Anthony Ujah, who scored an own goal in the sixth minute and got things off to a bad start for his team.

But Kiel added one of their own from Steve Müller in the 64th minute, continuing their streak as the spoil-sports in the German Cup. They already knocked out Cottbus and Duisburg in the first two rounds, both second league teams.

In the final match of the evening, Stuttgart’s Cacau singlehandedly eliminated fellow Bundesliga side Hamburg, scoring a goal in each half to lead his team to a 2-1 win.

Stuttgart will host Bayern Munich in the quarterfinals in February. Dortmund travels to Kiel for what amounts to a very intimidating draw for the unlikely fourth league quarterfinalists. Rounding out the quarterfinals, Hoffenheim take on second-league team Greuther Fürth.

Author: Matt Zuvela, Mönchengladbach
Editor: Holly Fox