High Flying

By: Abby | October 31st, 2008

That’s what Hertha is right now. Even Raphael Honigstein is saying it (we’re the surprise package, after Hoffenheim, apparently). That means that, as we head to Werder Bremen in the first week of November, we’re five places ahead of the Champions League team. And even if we lose at the Weserstadion, we’ll still be ahead of them in the table.

Weird, yeah?

After Wednesday, we’re in fifth place. A 3-0 win, at home, over Hannover 96 brought us up to a total of 18 points. Marko Pantelic opened the scoring in the 62nd minute, but the scoreline didn’t add a nice gloss of the multiple goals until the last few minutes, when Andriy Voronin (in the 84th) and Valeri Domovchiyski (in the 90th, just a few minutes after coming on) added to the total. A nice win, a clean sheet, and despite all our injury problems, we’re doing quite well. Hertha has been a busy team indeed while I’ve been busy with lots of life things.

That doesn’t mean everything is running smoothly, however.

Namely, the Pantelic situation is getting worse and worse. He scored another goal at midweek, but also talked about how the club needs to meet his demands. Complaining about how the manager is treating you seems to be all the rage among players in Germany right now, and Pante is no exception.

He says some telling things. “I have the feeling that from our first day working together, I was not the coach’s favourite player,” said Pantelic. “Nevertheless, I held my tongue and have scored 13 goals in the league last season.” Which is probably true- reports of Lulu and Pante not getting along started to emerge around when Lulu came to Hertha. Pante, for all his abilities, is clearly not Lulu’s kind of player. He also hasn’t done anything to make himself more likeable to the coach, and has continued to be, well, a bit of a diva.

The issue now is the contract. The wrangling has gone on for a long time, and now, Pante has decided that he’s no longer negotiating. “Now Hertha must understand that they can’t determine the price of my contract any longer. They must accept what I want,, said the Serbian.

Which, you know, whatever. I’m used to him being a diva. The problem I have, though, is with the rest of what he said- namely, that the sort of €4 million contract being offered to Arne Friedrich isn’t good enough for him- and that “it is quite normal that a top forward gets a better contract than a defender.”

It may be true, but it annoys the crap out of me. Defense is as needed as offense is. Our success this season is built as much on a well-organized defense as on the goals we’ve scored. Not to mention that Arne is the club’s captain. There’s no reason that Marko should be paid more than the captain just because the captain is a defender. It’s something that does bother me. Strikers should have a certain level of arrogance, it helps them do their job, but they need to respect the rest of their teammates. The defenders aren’t as flashy as they are- but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter.

Anyway, the whole thing drags on. The contract wrangles continue. The fighting continues. Dieter Hoeness, for his part, seems to desperately want to keep Pante and is preparing a contract. It’s hard to say exactly how far Lulu will take the fight. He would definitely prefer a younger, less demanding striker, but finding one is a risk. We already have a proven one who’s saved us many, many times and continues to do so…but he knows how many times he’s been a savior.

At least it gives me something to write about, I suppose.