I’m Sick And Everyone’s Injured
By: Abby | January 12th, 2009Well, maybe that’s a bit of a hyperbole. I’m feeling way better than I was last week- my cough is nearly entirely gone. And not everyone on Hertha is injured- only Jaroslav Drobny, Marko Pantelic, Cicero, Josip Simunic, Gojko Kacar, Pal Dardai, and Patrick Ebert. (Of those, Drobny’s, upsettingly, seems to be the most serious and there’s doubts that he’ll be available for the first game back.)
Still, though. That’s a lot of injuries and I felt like crap last week.
Hertha, though, are off at their winter training camp, trading in cold, snowy Berlin for sunny, warm Marbella, in Spain. (Dolph Lundgren has a home there, according to Wikipedia.) They arrived today and will be there until the 21st, getting back into shape after the holiday break and getting ready to continue our improbable climb to the upper reaches of the table.
Training began again last Monday, in snow that my parents and sister managed to avoid on their Berlin trip (oh, I miss the days of university-length winter vacations) but that somewhat bewildered our Brazilians. We even managed to get a friendly in- a 3-1 victory over Polish second division side Flota Swinemünde. A team mostly consisting of reserves and kids took on the Poles, and the first goal of 2009 was scored by, happily, Amine Chermiti, who seems to be fully recovered from his knee injury and played a full 90 minutes. Lucio, not quite match-fit, managed 59. Raffael got the second goal from a free-kick, and the scoring was completed by youngster Sascha Bigalke (who Raffael had replaced, and then replaced Lucio- ah, friendlies). Bigalke, you might remember, was one of the three Hertha youth who so impressed Lulu last summer.
Anyway, now it’s sunny Spain, and the friendlies scheduled in between the training. SC Freiburg, VfL Onsabruck, and SK Brann are all on the list. Freiburg is up first, on Wednesday. And, of course, the training- Lulu has plans.
In other news, Schalke were linked to Andriy Voronin, except then Schalke denied it. Fascinating. In general, we haven’t been linked to much transfer activity- money is tight and with some of our better players returning, like Lucio and Chermiti, new players aren’t a huge priority- even Lulu says so. What’s more heartening for me is that our players haven’t been linked with moves away, other than Voronin. With us having a good season it is a worry that our better performers could be lured to bigger clubs, but so far, we’ve at least got a chance of keeping them until the season is over. 
Although apparently we’re about to sign a 21-year-old Romanian, Alex Curtean. Not being able to read Romanian, I have no clue what’s going on. If there are any Romanians out there who can tell me what’s up with him, I’d love some insight.
Anyway, that’s what’s going on around Hertha. Now that I’m feeling better and the holidays are over, hopefully I can keep finding news until the winter break is finally over…
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Hope you feel better soon, Abby. There was some news over at Steve Goff’s blog about the American Bryan Arguez, who apparently has discipline issues.
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