Same As the First

By: Abby | February 11th, 2008

I concluded Friday’s nostalgic and slightly emotional post by concluding that it was unlikely for history to repeat itself. Our away record is atrocious and Stuttgart were starting to pull themselves together before the break, despite losing to Schalke right after it. I was already thinking towards Bielefeld.

I was wrong.

Not only did Hertha beat Stuttgart, they did it by the exact same score as they did before. 3-1. And it was pretty fantastic. Hertha put together a confident, assured performance, with new signings showing their worth. And like in the first one we needed a bit of luck, but in the end we were deserved winners.

The first goal came in the seventh minute. New boy Gojko Kacar let Marko Pantelic into the Stuttgart penalty area and Pante proved how good he is by firing past a Stuttgart defender into the far corner of the net. One up.

Stuttgart got one back at the 40th minute- Friedrich gave away a free-kick at the edge of the area, which hit the wall only to be sent back in and Mario Gomez (or someone) headed it in with Drobny stranded.

Right at the end of the half is an awful time to concede. But we weren’t the ones hurting this time- right at the stroke of halftime, 44th minute, Pante again produced an amazing finish and we were the ones going into the dressing room happy.

It was a mood that carried on into the second half. Only three minutes in and Miniero (on as a sub at the half for the injured Lustenberger), after good work from Pante and Patrick Ebert, let Raffael in with a beautiful pass that he smashed into the top of the net from close range for his first Hertha goal. After that we had several actually good chances, and Stuttgart had their debutant teenage goalkeeper Sven Ulreich to thank for the score not being any higher. Also, they had defender Delpierre sent off. Just wasn’t their day against us. Surprisingly enough, it isn’t their day against us often- according to GolTV, Veh has never beat Hertha as Stuttgart manager.

So it’s another 3-1 against Stuttgart. And an away victory. We’re now back to 12th and six points away from the drop zone. There are very winnable games coming up, but I’m not taking anything for granted. But if we play like this again…