If Tradition Means Anything

By: Abby | November 14th, 2008

Then we’ll get a good result against Hamburg. In the previous 10 meetings, they haven’t won once. It’s one of our somewhat-inexplicable trends, along with beating Stuttgart and losing to Cottbus.

Last season, the result of Hamburg’s visit was a dull 0-0 draw. This is still a possibility. Neither HSV or ourselves have been hugely prolific goalscorers in single games throughout the season, with the occasional exception (a 4-2 win over Bielefeld for them, the first Otaci game for us). But, of course, I’m hoping for something a little higher.

We come in in good form, thanks to that win over Hoffenheim, and only two points behind our fourth-placed opponent. A win would see us overtake them and reach a pretty dizzying height for us, especially at this point in the season. We’re about a month away from the winter break and haven’t yet really collapsed (although there’s still plenty of time for that, so keep your fingers crossed.)

As seemingly always, there’s a well-known ex-Herthaner in the HSV squad. This one is Jerome Boateng, one of the two Boateng brothers that came up through the Hertha youth system. Both Boatengs left in the summer of 2007- Jerome, rather cheaply to Hamburg, and Kevin-Prince, far more extravagantly to Tottenham. The manager of Tottenham at the time was, of course, Martin Jol, currently manager of Hamburg. So he signed one, but in the end, ended up with the other. Chris says that Jerome isn’t likely to start- does Jol have a Boateng bias?- and he’s a defender as well, but I always watch out for the ex-players. They tend to come back to bite us. Although Sejad Salihović didn’t, did he?

Team news ahead of the visit of the dinosaurs is that Marko Pantelic is injured. While that used to be a case for despair, we’ve proven that we can win without him at least once- and in the game against Hoffenheim, he was off the pitch when the winning goal was scored. Andriy Voronin, who scored that goal, is in good form and expected to start alone up front. We could also see the return of Patrick Ebert, who’s been training all week after recovering from his surgery.

Another young player we might be seeing sometime soon is Amine Chermiti. He’s also back in training, recovered from the bad injury suffered in August. Saturday is probably too soon to see him- we don’t want to rush- but the game after, against Bochum, is a distinct possibility. I’m excited to see him get a run of games, and can’t wait to see what he can do.

Let’s hope we’re up in the high parts of the table when we do…