Fabian Reese (l.), here against Schalke’s Henning Matriciani, is a face of the new Hertha team and impresses on offense with league-best scores.
Photo: imago/David Inderlied
If football were just the game on the pitch and the passion of the supporters, you could almost envy Hertha BSC. The club from Charlottenburg has gained more than 5,000 new members in the past twelve months – despite being relegated from the first division. After three opening defeats, the team arrived in the second division and climbed to ninth place after four wins from the last six games. And Pal Dardai spreads good news: the coach wants to reach fourth or fifth place by Christmas. A success on Sunday at 1. FC Nürnberg would bring the Berliners closer to this goal.
Sporting success also improves your mood. Finally there was a loud crash again. “Professional football as an alternative fan project doesn’t work,” said Klaus Brüggemann, saying goodbye to Hertha BSC after more than 20 years. Shortly before the general meeting, the chairman of the supervisory board resigned. In doing so, he forestalled another request for deselection last Sunday. Above all, Brüggemann’s derogatory choice of words in his criticism of the new “Berlin Way” under President Kay Bernstein shows that peace has not yet returned to the club.
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The rivals couldn’t look each other in the eye. Bernstein greeted those gathered from his sick bed with a video message, Brüggemann stayed away from the event and had a statement read out. Both represent the culture war at Hertha, which apparently still hasn’t found a winner. After 23 years on the supervisory board or presidium, Brüggemann embodies Hertha’s path to failure – and also wanted to prevent Bernstein’s election in June 2022 with his opponent Frank Steffel. The new president wants to “make the club a club again” through more grassroots democratic participation and work against the “corrupt system” in professional football. Bernstein sees an unstoppable “revolution of the organized fan scene” against all the turbo-capitalist excesses in this sport.
However, someone like Bernstein also swallows fat toads in an emergency. On the Hertha BSC jerseys, the big “B” does not stand for Berlin, but for a sports betting provider and online casino. “We don’t want money from betting providers,” he said in the summer of 2022 before his election, promoting better football and himself. That’s why Brüggemann accuses him of lying without providing any evidence, including nepotism and self-interest.
What should you do if the club had to record a loss of almost 100 million euros again last season? Perhaps that is why Brüggemann said that Bernstein was overwhelmed by the presidency. The club’s management blames their predecessors. “This is due to the expansion course of the past with high investments in the squad and long-term player contracts,” explained managing director Thomas Herrich. At the same time, equity has shrunk from almost 30 million euros to around 5 million. Herrich still spreads hope: “We will almost be able to achieve our goal of having a balanced result in 2025 this season.”
Don’t spend more than you earn? If that were to actually happen, it would be a success, but at a high price. It wasn’t just the professional squad whose budget was reduced from 80 million euros to 30 million that was saved. Hertha BSC now also has 80 fewer employees. “We have reduced the total costs by almost 80 million euros,” calculated managing director Herrich. “We must continue on the path of economic consolidation every day in a disciplined manner – with passion, heart and humility,” emphasized President Bernstein.
Hertha has shown in the past that money doesn’t score goals. With smart transfers and the youngest team in the league, the Berliners are at least competitive. If Pal Dardai didn’t want to know anything about direct promotion before the start of the season, the coach’s words now certainly fueled this hope. He also has a good feel for a team – and made Hertha BSC one again. What she shows is not outstanding in terms of play. Because commitment and passion are there again, they appear as a compact unit, which is particularly noticeable in the improved defensive work. And so Hertha only narrowly lost on the penultimate matchday against a top team like St. Pauli. The team from the Hamburg neighborhood calls Dardai, along with HSV, “in a class of its own.” He counts his team as one of the “twelve behind, all of which are similarly strong.”
Hertha’s upcoming opponent also belongs to this category. A success against the Franconians, who have the same points in the table – and Dardai’s Christmas wish could be fulfilled earlier. One person who can ensure this is Fabian Reese. The 25-year-old came from Holstein Kiel in the summer and has quickly become a face of the new Berlin team. As a constant runner on the left flank, he constantly creates danger; 273 sprints and 47 crosses are league bests. Haris Tabaković has another statistic after nine matchdays: the striker has scored the most goals so far with seven goals. And fellow striker Smail Prevljak is getting better and better. Hertha only had to pay a transfer fee for Tabaković, signed from Austria Vienna – and thus built a strong offensive with 500,000 euros.
The fans seem to like the new Berlin way on and off the pitch. In addition to the number of members increasing to 49,440, this is also reflected in the audience response. An average of 46,000 fans have so far come to the games in the Olympic Stadium, for which the club has agreed with the Berlin Senate to completely defer the rent for this season. Stepan Timoshin also sits in the stadium at many home games, and has been for many years. The 23-year-old, who has become known as the “Sneaker Millionaire,” is also one of the newest members of Hertha BSC – to run in the presidential election in November 2024, as recently announced. “What the current club management is currently doing proves to me that the values that Hertha once stood for, values that I grew up with in the stadium, no longer apply today,” he said, also mentioning the sponsorship deal with the sports betting provider . The culture war in Charlottenburg is unlikely to end any time soon.
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