Things That Are Official

By: Abby | August 6th, 2008

$He\'s here!$ 1. Amine Chermiti is a Hertha player. It took long enough- several months, multiple declarations in the press that it’s about to be called off, etc. I’m still not sure what the specifics of the deal are- the Hertha website reports the original news- that it’s a two-year loan for some reason- but the UEFA website (so hardly Bild, here) is reporting that we’ve made it actually permanent.

Whatever the case, he’s in Berlin, at Hertha, and will be wearing the 27 shirt. Why 27? Well, his normal shirt has always been 9, which is Marko Pantelic’s number, and 2 plus 7 is 9. (A bit like Gojko Kacar’s shirt decision- four was already picked, so two fours is 44.)

If you want to learn about the ‘Tunisian Maradona’, and even if you’re not sure you do, check out Rami’s post on the player. It is far more detailed than anything I could dream of, written by someone who’s been following the kid for quite some time. He’s made me pretty excited for a player all of 20 years old.

2. Hertha BSC are through to the next qualifying round of the UEFA Cup. I didn’t write about it last week because I’ve been way too busy in my actual life and frankly, the game was boring. As everyone probably expected, considering the first match was won 8-1. The second was a formality and ended in a 0-0 draw played out in front of 700 people in Chisnau, Moldova. Yay? The exciting news was that 17-year-olds Shervin Radjabali-Fardi and Lennart Hartmann, two of the young stars of the Hertha pre-season, made starts, and were joined by 18-year-old Sascha Bigalke after the break. All Berlin-born kids brought up from the youth system. It does seem as if Favre’s vaunted ability with youth players might actually be true.

Our opponents in the next round are another team from Eastern Europe I’ve never heard of. Let’s hope that NK Interblock Ljubljana prove as easy as FC Nistru Otaci. We do have the advantage of a second leg in Berlin this time, though. Rawr!

3. Gojko Kacar will be staying in China with the Serbian team, despite today’s ruling in favor of the clubs. While his case hasn’t been nearly as high-profile (or mentioned) as the players at the bigger clubs, it’s basically the same thing. Gojko wanted to play in the Olympics, we wanted him to play for us in our opening games and our UEFA Cup qualifiers. We didn’t let him go, then we did. Now, since he’s there already and pissing him off would be pointless, we bartered with the Serbian federation to pay his salary while he’s there and some insurance for possible injuries.

Gojko’s group contains Leo Messi’s Argentina, but also the Ivory Coast and struggling Australia, so there’s a chance we won’t be seeing him for a bit.

5. We had a ‘keeper question between Jaroslav Drobny and Christian Fiedler, but now we don’t, as Fiedler tore his cruciate ligaments in our friendly win against Newcastle last week. He’s looking at six months out, at least.

6. Work gets in the way of things that aren’t work, and I’ve been lax here. Sorry, everyone.