Eins, Zwei, Drei, Neun

By: Abby | May 10th, 2008

Apologies for lack of posting in a week where actual things were going on, but I’ve been having a birthday and therefore without time to write up posts.

But in my absence, Hertha’s done surprisingly well for themselves. Three wins in a row as of today, and as I type we’re in ninth. One of those wins was even away. As Jan pointed out the other day, in the table just for the second half of the season we’re in sixth. There’s one game left to go and instead of collapsing, we’ve done better. We could still go down horribly to the champions next week, but that hardly counts.

First, there was Wednesday’s away win at Leverkusen. While most of the coverage was focused on sixth-placed Leverkusen’s problems rather than our skills, it still made me happy. It isn’t every day that Hertha beats a top-six team like Leverkusen away from home. While Leverkusen’s awful form of late may have been a contributor to the result, we still got one. Too often this season teams that have needed a win have gotten them off of Hertha.

At Leverkusen, we went one up at 26 minutes from Marko Pantelic, scoring his thirteenth of the season. I don’t need to say again how great Pante’s been for us- it’s a reoccurring theme. (So much so that a €35 million transfer fee has been slapped on him.) Stefan Kießling got sent off for the home team on 62 minutes for elbowing Gojko Kacar- perhaps a bit harsh, considering what the elbow actually did to Gojko (nothing), but the curly-headed striker did retaliate against our young Serb. Things went worse for the home team after Rene Adler brought down Lukasz Piszczek when the Pole was attempting to round him. Sofian Chahed again put away the penalty, and Hertha were cruising. Perhaps a little too much- Leverkusen got one back at 89 minutes, and we could have lost the win we deserved if Drobny hadn’t been paying attention to make a fine save from Bulykin soon after as Leverkusen remembered that they were attempting to play in the UEFA Cup next season.

A bit of luck, perhaps, in some of the flashpoints (Kießling’s sending off and the penalty), but sometimes you make your own luck. We played well and Leverkusen were harmless. A far cry from their win over us in the first half of the season- either they’re slumping or we’re improving. Or both. I’ll take both.

Speaking of all those things, today’s game against relegation-haunted 1. FC Nürnberg was another one where we turned around the result from the first half of the season. It took a while, but finally Raffael scored in the 74th minute for a 1-0 win against the Franconians. Perhaps the team just weren’t used to the new jerseys yet, worn for the first time for the home closer. The result leaves der Club two points from safety, with the possibility of joining Duisburg and Hansa Rostock in the 2. Bundesliga next season looking likely.

As for us? We’re up to ninth, single digits, and 44 points. It’s a nice place to be in. Nice for everyone, but probably especially for Lulu, who apparently gets 20,000 Euros for each point over 40 Hertha get. As it stands, he’ll get an extra €80,000 in his pocket- a result against Bayern next weekend would mean even more. Hopefully that will stand as a counter to reports in the Swiss press that Lulu’s had enough and wants to go either to back to Switzerland or onto France. It’s worrying to be sure, although I can see where this comes from. In Switzerland Lulu had the winning team, the dominant team, in FC Zürich. I don’t doubt that Zürich, for all they’re in a smaller league, were better-organized- dominant teams in a league tend to be managed well. He made far less, but he definitely won far more. It may be frustrating to struggle with a team many tipped for relegation at the beginning of the season, who need a lot of work and investment before they get up to the kind of team that Favre wants to be the manager of.

However, making Hertha a success would do wonders to his (or anyone’s) reputation. So far it looks like he’s taking strides forwards- his signings have been solid and the more time he’s had the better the team has looked. His signings in the winter were good and he’s apparently sending his staff all around to look at new players for the summer. While that doesn’t necessarily mean he doesn’t want to go off to France (he signed Yassine Chikhaoui for Zurich and then never got a chance to play with him, taking off for Hertha before he could), but it’s a good sign that he’s sticking around. Hopefully two good wins should make him feel better.

In other news, veteran midfielder Andreas Schmidt has announced his retirement. He’s been with Hertha since 1993, playing through our triumphs and failures. Recently he’s been a “standby”, playing in the Hertha second team, captaining the youngsters while being on call in case he’s needed. Good luck and thanks for everything you’ve done. (And if anyone wants to check out a seriously Germanic music playlist- and incidentally the only one so far that I’d actually listen to- he’s the featured music collection on Hertha Freundin this month.)

And, since you’ve read though this whole thing, here’s some match highlights.

Hertha v. Bayer Leverkusen:

Bayer vs Hertha highlights
Hochgeladen von visitorius

Hertha v. 1. FC Nürnberg: