After a desolate performance, Hertha slips deeper into the relegation vortex
After the defeat in Bochum, Hertha BSC also loses against Wolfsburg. The performance against VfL must worry those responsible. The team presents itself in a desolate state and acts like a relegated team.
Niko Kovac remains in goal rush with VfL Wolfsburg and gave his old love Hertha BSC a bad stab in the relegation battle. Only three days after the six-pack against SC Freiburg, the Lower Saxony celebrated the next smashing victory with the 5-0 (3-0) in Berlin and exacerbated the mood of crisis in the frighteningly helpless capital city club. Mattias Svanberg (4th minute), Maximilian Arnold (31st/penalty), Jonas Wind (34th), Ridle Baku (72nd) and Omar Marmoush (86th) scored the goals in the one-sided game.
While Wolfsburg is now on course for the European Cup with ten games without defeat, the desolate Hertha remains in 17th place at the end of the first half of the Bundesliga – a direct relegation zone. The Berliners conceded their highest defeat of the season and conceded five goals for the first time. Coach Sandro Schwarz has to get the blue and whites up quickly by Saturday, otherwise there is a risk of the next humiliation in the derby against 1. FC Union Berlin.
Hertha is deep in the relegation battle
Those: dpa/Soeren Stache
The friendly embrace of the coaches before kick-off was quite intimate. The original Berliner Kovac may have whispered to the current Hertha coach Schwarz that he should please save his “home club”. On this lousy cold evening in the Olympic Stadium, there was a suspicion that this wish would remain an impossible one to fulfil. Schwarz had demanded much more intensity and aggressiveness from his players after the 1:3 disappointment in Bochum. He was offered exactly the opposite from the start.
Svanberg duped the entire Berlin defensive network with a horizontal run through the Hertha penalty area and scored his first Bundesliga goal, which is well worth seeing. Even in Bochum, Schwarz missed an answer to an early deficit. This time what happened at Hertha in terms of coordinated build-up: Nothing! A shot from Suat Serdar (24th) was everything.
Even worse: After Rogel was only able to compensate for his personal speed limit with a rude bump against Patrick Wimmer, Lukebakio fended off the following free kick in the wall quite clumsily with his elbow. Arnold converted the penalty safely. Wind quickly added the third goal.
For the second half, Kevin-Prince Boateng swore in his colleagues in front of the substitute bench. That had an effect at first. At least there was fighting now. Hertha now played braver, showed at least one face-saving performance and also benefited from the fact that the mellow Wolfsburg allowed a little more. However, the attack efforts did not have resounding success. Instead, Wolfsburg even followed up twice.
TSG Hoffenheim – VfB Stuttgart 2:2
Coach Bruno Labbadia was unable to celebrate a win in the second game after his return to VfB Stuttgart. The Swabians came to a 2:2 (1:1) at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim. The battered and tough game gave the spectators in the Sinsheimer Stadion a foretaste of the relegation battle in the second half of the Bundesliga season. The Croatian World Cup third Andrej Kramaric gave the troubled TSG an early lead (11th minute) and also scored the late equalizer (90+4). Serhou Guirassy (45’+5′) and captain Waturu Endo scored for VfB (77′).
The Stuttgarters missed their first away win in over a year, most recently on December 11, 2021 they won 2-0 in Wolfsburg. André Breitenreiter’s Hoffenheim team are still three points ahead of VfB, but have now recorded just one win in the past eleven games and have been without three points in seven games.
