The experiment fails.
By: Abby | October 24th, 2007
OK, confession time- when I started watching the Bundesliga, I watched Werder Bremen. I liked Miroslav Klose and I’ve always been fond of an exciting attacking side controlled by an adorable little midfielder (hi, Cesc!). I would still prefer to see them succeed over their other title rivals. So this would always be a little bittersweet for me. Logically, I knew that if Werder wanted to at least theoretically challenge Bayern Munich’s domination of this season, they have to beat teams like Hertha at home.
Not that I didn’t want an upset. And after the first half, I thought there was a chance of nicking a point. Hertha looked decent and had a real chance right before halftime that Gilberto somehow managed to miss. As the GolTV commentator said, there are nil-nil draws and there are nil-nil draws, and to that point it had been fairly exciting.
In the second half Werder took control from the start. Hertha were riding their luck, with a miss from Fritz and Diego hitting the crossbar, and unfortunately the luck didn’t last. Almeida blasted past Drobny on the 58th minute, but then Gilberto quickly atoned for his earlier miss and equalized with a lovely little chip over Wiese. Any chance of getting something from the game, however, disappeared not even a minute afterwards with Werder’s second. Hertha lost it after that and it was clear the third was coming, as it did on the 74th minute, and re-watching shows how lucky Hertha were that there weren’t more after. Instead, the fifth goal came from Hertha- Solomon Okoronkwo, who I like more the more I see him, scored a nice, tricky second Hertha goal right before the whistle blew.
Hertha was outclassed, simple as that. Werder had 64% possession and even the Hertha website talked about mismatches and domination. Our captain Arne Friedrich summed up the final quarter as “hara-kiri football,” and he’s not wrong. But I’m an optimistic person and there were positives. The two goals that we scored were certainly quality. And when Bremen are on form, it can be a lot worse- just ask Bielefeld.
Next up we’re back to the terrifying-yet-compelling Olympiastadion for the visit of VfL Bochum. After a good start it’s now 4 games without a win and hopefully we’ll get back to success against the Ruhr club (tangent: how many Bundesliga clubs are from the Ruhr valley?). I’ll have a match preview up later.
Category: match reports
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Comments
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I watched the match, and i really thought that hertha were not that bad, specially in the first half. Hertha should have punished werder for their stupid defensive mistakes.
What really made the difference between the two teams is Diego who is currently in amazing form.Posted from
Egypt
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I agree with you, Ayman. Hopefully they’ll play like they did in the first half this weekend against Bochum- if they do, we’ll get the points. Although it does prove that anyone can score on Werder…it’s just that Werder score more.
Posted from
United States -
I think Berlin will be favourites to beat Bochum. Favre has been experimenting a lot recently, and in the worst case this could turn against them on Saturday. Anyway, Berlin can make a strong statement, that they won’t play a major part in this season’s relegation party with a win. If they haven’t already.
Posted from
Germany -
Hertha didn’t look to bad, I agree but we didn’t keep our concentration over the 90 minutes. That seems to be a problem with Hertha even before Falko G*TZ was in charge of the club. I didn’t expect us to win at Werder, but we didn’t give too bad an account of ourselves. That being said, the second goal was a killer, we had just scored, and once again, our concentration was lacking. Its very frustrating.
Grahn is especially frustrating to watch. He seems to be a very egotistical player, who always tries to beat his man instead of passing. At this point, I would not try to buy him, unless he were to come on a free transfer. Even if so, I would have to think about it. Andre Lima also so far has offered nothing, he seems to be a strong fellow, but he doesn’t use his strength well. However, its early days yet for both of these players, maybe once they get used to German football, they will start playing up to their potential.
Posted from
United States
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