Cities of the World

By: Abby | November 21st, 2008

One of my favorite side effects about football is the way it improves my knowledge of geography. Following the Bundesliga, for example, has taught me much about where the cities in Germany are located, and often, what they are. (The flipside of this is that I still only have a vague concept of cities without much of a Bundesliga representation- I’m rather fuzzy on Düsseldorf, for example.)

Bochum is one of those cities that I probably would have not known existed without the Bundesliga. No offense to Bochum, which I’m sure is lovely, but I can’t imagine myself knowing anything about it without football. However, because football exists, I know that it’s in the Ruhr valley around Gelsenkirchen and Dortmund and could maybe even put it on a map, if I had reason to do such a thing.

So what does all this mean? Well, that Hertha is traveling to the Ruhr this weekend to take on VfL Bochum. They’re known as a scrappy sort of team, perpetually in the middle-to-lower regions of the table, but tenaciously staying up anyway. At the moment they’re tenaciously out of the relegation zone only on goal difference. They’ve only won once this season, but have drawn many times, most recently a 1-1 against Hanover.

Team news ahead of the trip is that Pante is slightly doubtful, after missing last week’s win over Hamburg, but if he recovers he should start. Other than that the team that beat Hamburg should be the team that takes the pitch at the rewirpowerSTADION.

The question is, how will Hertha act now that everyone’s noticed them? Until now we’ve got to where we are basically undetected. But in the past week, after being Hamburg and going up to fourth, we’ve been spotted. People are writing about us. We go into the game on Saturday as clear favorites, expecting to win, and other people might be interested in this result. It’s a new situation for us.

The result could show a lot about us, and about our real pedigree. Are we ready to achieve something, or are we going to crumble when there’s pressure on us? I think we do have a certain amount of mental strength, which has been what’s been winning our games. We win games that we aren’t supposed to win, because we have a belief in our ability to do so (and a good line in exploiting weaknesses of other teams, which granted, doesn’t always come off). I’m normally pessimistic about my teams’, any team of mine, chances in this kind of a situation, but…

A win would put us back over Dortmund into fourth. I like fourth.