After the game, Pal Dardai quickly decided in the middle of the sleet in the Frankfurt city forest that cheering was the order of the day. So the hopefuls at Hertha BSC stalked straight to the sodden lawn to seek physical proximity to the defeated protagonists. The old and new coach patted many shoulders and pressed numerous hands to assure despite the 1: 3 at Eintracht Frankfurt: Hey guys, everything is fine. The verbal strokes from the press room of the Frankfurt arena sounded just like that shortly afterwards: “Everything was actually okay, only the result was not okay.”
According to the experienced professional realist, his first game was a matter of luck. Don’t get it wrong, said Dardai. After only four training units, he could only rate his debut as “a friendly game”, “now we can do a real analysis and work properly”. The next challenge for the capital city club, which is striving for self-discovery, has it all: on Friday the record champions will introduce themselves in the Olympic Stadium. “I know Bayern Munich is coming, that’s nice too,” Dardai explained – and gave a short laugh. After that, only 14 attempts could remain to achieve the clause allegedly agreed in his contract on continued employment – 24 points until the end of the season.
In view of such challenges, reinforcement can’t hurt: Sami Khedira is about to move to Hertha, only the medical check was still pending on Sunday. The radiance of the world champion is as if made for a big city club. “We are in talks,” confirmed Managing Director Carsten Schmidt on Sunday morning, he himself had “a long phone call” with the professional who moved from VfB Stuttgart to Real Madrid in 2010 and moved on to Juventus Turin in 2015. The 77-time national player, who resigned from the DFB selection after the messed up World Cup 2018, is “a great leader with a lot of experience” – and this is exactly what makes him so interesting, said Schmidt. The problem is the lack of competition practice: the 33-year-old has not even played this season under coach Andrea Pirlo.
Dardai would still receive him with open arms. “The club management forgot a lot when it came to putting together the squad,” criticized Hertha’s record player. It is an open secret that the fighter Dardai wants to make his former territory more robust in the central defensive midfield. Troublemaker Santiago Ascacibar occupied the strategically important position in Frankfurt, but the strong Argentine as one of six new forces in the starting line-up was only conditionally recommended as a stabilizer.
The most surprising thing among all personnel raids was the Berlin goalkeeper swap: Rune Jarstein had hardly expected to slip back into the starting line-up for Alexander Schwolow, who was brought in from SC Freiburg last summer. Dardai’s reasoning: »Alex is a good goalkeeper, but he has not had goalkeeping luck. Now he’s taking a little break. ”Which could even take longer, because the 36-year-old Norwegian Jarstein impressed in his season debut. But a routine support between the posts was not enough for the turnaround, the crisis club from the western part of Berlin has too many construction sites.
»After the lead, there was no experience of how to deal with a 1-0. This team is definitely insecure, ”said Dardai. No sooner had the coach celebrated Krzysztof Piatek’s (66th) opening goal in an almost touching tête-à-tête with sports director Arne Friedrich than central defender Jordan Torunarigha misjudged the equalizer of Eintracht striker André Silva (67th). Following a very similar pattern, the Berlin team was duped by the defensive chief Martin Hinteregger from Frankfurt (85th). Silva, who has been in impressive form since last spring, then added his 16th goal of the season with a penalty kick in the fifth minute of stoppage time.
The Portuguese who came to the Main metropolis in the summer of 2019 in exchange with Ante Rebic from AC Milan embodies all the Frankfurt self-confidence that is so sorely missed in Berlin. Dardai expressly praised how well-rehearsed Hessen, who had at least temporarily stormed third place with seven wins from the last eight league games, looked. Nevertheless, Hertha’s role model has not regretted having stepped in a second time as an emergency helper. His Bundesliga comeback was a nice thing, said the Hungarian, who briefly thought about how this weekend would have gone otherwise. “I could have gone to Székesfehérvár,” he revealed. There he would have watched his eldest son Palko make his debut for the Hungarian top club Fehérvár against Honved Budapest, “chatted a bit” and then drove home. Possibly more enjoyable than playing the encouragement in the Frankfurt snow drift.
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