Hertha BSC has produced some dizzying numbers in the recent past. There is, for example, the 374 million euros in investor money that the club pulverized within four years. Or the number of coaches who thought they were responsible for the first team between 2019 and 2023. It was eight.
A new one came on Saturday and that was also a record. The Berliners took the lead four times during the second division game at 1. FC Magdeburg, but in the end it was of little use: Hertha lost the completely wild, at times anarchic encounter 4:6.
“If you score four goals away from home…”
No team in the history of German professional football has led four times and then lost. A novelty, which Hertha’s coach Pal Dardai considered with a laconic analysis: “Offensively we were good, defensively rubbish.” Dardai said his players behaved naively. Neither of them tried to come up with an excuse: “If you score four goals away from home, you have to win,” said Haris Tabakovic.
As in the previous week, the Swiss had scored two goals against Fürth (5-0), which contributed to the positive results of this business trip, which Berlin saw as a failure. The newly assembled Hertha can apparently score goals. There are nine in the past two games. Before that, they failed to score a single goal in their first three games, leading some fans to believe that their club faces a troubled season in the second division as well.
The game in Magdeburg did nothing to dispel these doubts. On the contrary. Hertha led for an hour each time with a goal, Magdeburg always managed to equalize before the hosts took the lead for the first time after just over an hour through El Hankouri. Unlike Magdeburg, Hertha had no answer ready for the deficit. The Berliners have now lost four of the first five games of the season and find themselves in the bottom third of the table.
Behind them lies a huge personnel upheaval. In the past few weeks, the club has parted with almost all footballers who had been signed with money from investor Lars Windhorst at completely overpriced prices.
Among others, Dodi Lukebakio, Lucas Tousart, Krzysztof Piatek, Omar Alderete, Oliver Christensen, Marco Richter and Filip Uremovic are gone. Suat Serdar could at least be awarded. Overall, the income from the sales is almost 32 million euros. All of those, on the other hand, once cost around 90 million euros.
Sebastian Stier, Berlin Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 11 Daniel Theweleit, Mönchengladbach Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 2 A comment by Christopher Meltzer Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 4
Hertha’s management only spent around four million euros this summer, of which Michal Karbownik alone cost around 2.5 million. Most players came free of charge or on favorable terms.
Sports director Benjamin Weber had to put together a new team under financially challenging conditions. After the performance of Magdeburg, no serious judgment can be made about their creative power. Internally, it is expected that a trend will only become apparent from mid-October as to the direction in which this season will go.
