The End of an Era
By: Abby | June 10th, 2009Dieter Hoeness has been the manager of Hertha BSC Berlin for 13 years. He’s been the manager as long as Hertha’s been in the Bundesliga- since 1997.
As of this week, he is no longer the manager.
There’s a lot to be said for his tenure. Despite everything, the club has stayed in the Bundesliga since it’s come up, becoming Berlin’s one representative in the top league. Hertha have flirted with Europe, both in Champions League and UEFA Cup form. We’ve had the occasional interesting player wear the blue and white. And, most importantly, Hertha has stayed in the Bundesliga. According to Dieter Hoeness, Hertha was a bit of a mess when he came in, and he’s stabilized it into what we know today.
But that doesn’t mean he’s been universally beloved. I remember a Rafael Honigstein article where he suggested that Uli Hoeness, the notoriously ruthless Bayern Munich general manager, instilled his less-talented brother at the Hertha position to ensure that Berlin never challenged Munich as a Bundesliga power. There have been several different ‘Hoeness out!’ demonstrations throughout the years. And for all the flirtations with Europe and interesting players, there’s mostly debt to show for it. He’s also been known for being paranoid and slightly argumentative, paranoid that his contribution isn’t being noticed and unwilling to let others take other credit.
The heart of the firing seems to be the simplest- players. It’s been Dieter’s job to find players for Hertha, and that’s where he’s been most at odds with possibly his most successful signing, coach Lucien Favre. It’s been felt that Dieter hasn’t been working the Hertha budget in the best possible way, and one could claim that the debt Hertha finds itself in is at least a large way due to his actions in the transfer market. The Hertha history is littered with signings that didn’t quite work out, particularly South Americans that never settled properly. The final straw seems to have been the possibility of Lucas Barrios, the Argentinian striker we were getting close to signing. Hoeness was enthusiastic of signing this untried player from the Chilean league, despite Colo Colo wanting a price close to what Liverpool wanted for Andriy Voronin, a player we already knew worked for us.
In the end, it was Hoeness’ best signing that lead to his downfall- Lucien Favre, the Swiss coach who’s done such a fantastic job in turning the fortunes of the club around this past season. While not quite wanting English-style control of the club, he clearly didn’t see eye-to-eye with Hoeness on the way the club should be going. With Hertha’s good season and interest from bigger clubs, like Hamburg and Bayern Munich, Lulu had a lot of power. He’s a manager that other clubs are interested in and that players are interested in playing for. For a club that hasn’t had much of an identity and that has had trouble attracting good players, that’s clearly something worth keeping.
And that’s what, in the end, the board thought as well. Lulu played the interest from those bigger clubs expertly. Now it will be him and ex-captain Michael Preetz- who’s been Dieter Hoeness’ “apprentice” and gained a degree in sports management since his retirement- to keep the club moving forward.
It’s not an easy situation. Hertha’s not an easy club to run. Time will tell who will prove to be right- Dieter Hoeness, who’s said he’s done all he can, or the new team of Preetz-Gegenbauer-Favre, who think they can do better.
As for me, the simple blogger, thousands of miles away from Berlin, with a substandard grasp of German and trying to figure out what’s going on? Well, I’ve been on the side of Lulu for just about the whole time I’ve been writing this blog. I’m not about to change that now.
Category: behind the scenes
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I couldn’t be any happier that Favre is staying. He clearly understands how to work with a small budget club and, more importantly, that Hertha are a small budget club.
I think having people in management that confused Berlin’s status as a city with Hertha’s status as a club, and acted accordingly has been responsible for a lot of problems over the years.
Posted from
United States
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I totally agree, Dan. He knows how to get the most of what Hertha has, and seems to be pretty committed now to the project.
Posted from
United States -
Great summary.
I really only started to follow Hertha more closely with the signing of Lucien Favre, because he immediately caught my interest and I wanted to see what he could achieve with Hertha. So all I know about Hertha prior to the Favre era comes from what I read in the press and on some forums over the past two years.
It seems that when Hoeness arrived at Hertha, the club was playing in the 2.Bundesliga and everything was a shambles, with no infrastructure or professional management. So he did well to change all that and establish the club in the Bundesliga. His tendency to be an absolutist ruler and decision maker may have even helped to get things done and shake things up back then.
But he clearly wanted more than just establishing Hertha and the club will have to pay the bill for years to come. I presume the club already had some debt when he arrived and taking the necessary steps like building a new training centre and a youth academy and all that will also have required some borrowed money. But that doesn’t excuse racking up big yearly deficits, which drive up debt or in some cases required Hertha to agree to signing fee deals and other things, which essentially meant selling Hertha’s future revenue streams. If you ask Hoeness all of this is of course not his fault, instead higher forces were at work. TV deals breaking down or the world economy breaking down or whatever. In reality he was a gambler and the events he quotes just expose the ones who were taking the biggest gambles. That being said, there are more people than just Hoeness who oversaw and agreed to this risky financing, so there are others in for some blame as well I guess.
Hoeness no other god beside me attitude obviously had run its course a long time ago and Favre seems to have been the first coach who really managed to stand up to Hoeness and his tendency to force his players on coaches.
All in all, this was the best decision for Hertha, but the positive results may take longer to materialise than next season. And that will surely be an invitation for unreflected criticism by some “experts”.
Posted from
Germany
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