How can you expect to be taken seriously?

When does this become real?

It’s a question that I’ve been asking myself, in regards to Hertha’s season. I’ve long been against considering us as title challengers. It seems odd that we would be. We didn’t start out even considering that option. The UEFA Cup was a serious consideration, and the hope was that we would scrape into the top 7 somehow. Three places improvement, that’s a legitimate goal.

But suddenly, we see ourselves as the leaders. It’s our second consecutive week as first place, and we’ve got a 4-point lead, which means that we’re going to be leaders for another week at least. And our mental blocks, the challenges that fail us every season, have been falling away.

Most recent block to fall- our neighbors, Energie Cottbus. An Andriy Voronin hat-trick propelled us over them for the first time in ages and we made the short trip back with a 1-3 victory. Sure, Cottbus went ahead, and there was a spectacular miss that would have made it 2-0, but the important part was that we actually beat Cottbus. Just like beating Bayern, beating Cottbus is a serious psychological boost. Those victories mean that things are different now. Hertha are a different team.

But are we really challengers?

While I still err on the side of caution, I do think that the press are starting to think of Hertha as serious contenders. Which, quite frankly, freaks out those who observe the Bundesliga at a professional or amateur level. I’ve noticed a change in the way that Hertha is written about. We’ve gone from being patronized, to thinking how neat it would be if an unknown like Hertha won a title, to being the possibly least-liked champions and having Dieter Hoeness likened to a streetside huckster. To the press, the challenge is real. And unlike Hoffenheim, they don’t like it.

Hoffenheim was a better fairytale. We may be more of one- no one is bankrolling us- but they were better. They were flashier, more convincing. They had no stars, but they had lots of names that could be stars. They would make the league look better to outsiders. And, one can imagine that Dietmar Hopp will send in reinforcements if Hoffenheim go off into Europe.

Hertha are the opposite. Not only no stars, but no real potential stars- our best players are already past the age that they could establish themselves in that upper echelon (barring, possibly, Gojko Kacar). There’s no flash to our game, we don’t look convincing. We’ve been a joke for years. And we certainly won’t make the Bundesliga look good, or have the funds to attract bright new names to show the league off.

The bubble is still expected to burst. I don’t blame anyone for thinking that. There’s a string of tough games ahead- Hamburg and an unbeaten-since-manager-change Stuttgart (no more of Hertha’s hold over Veh?) on the road await, as does a visit from Leverkusen and Bremen. And with us, you know, every game is a tough game. Everything has the potential to go the other way.

That’s part of the problem. That’s how come I can’t see this as real (yet) and why the press are so annoyed. We may be lucky, but after a certain period, you make your own luck.

Right?

Category: Team News

Tags: Team News

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