I Am Not Good With Transfers

By: Abby | January 19th, 2009

Predicting them, writing about them, whatever. When I write about a signing, it tends to hit an unforeseen snag. When I predict a signing, it’s never that. And when I say that we’re not looking to sign anyone, we immediately get linked to a load of players.

For example, soon after I wrote my last post, a notice appeared on the Hertha website that we’re trialing a young Serbian named Darko Lazović. He’s an 18-year-old attacking midfielder from Borac Čačak, and has already made his debut for the Serbian national team. Serbian youth are all the rage these days (our own lovely Gojko Kacar, for example), and he’s supposed to be quite talented. I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on how that develops.

A signing that seems to be very likely, pending the results of a medical (he’s got some kind of foot injury), is that of Australian Scott Chipperfeld. Known as “Chippers,” apparently, he’s a 33-year-old midfielder who’s played his entire European career at FC Basel. If he passes his medical, he’ll be joining us on loan from the Swiss club until the end of the year. It’s a bit of a random deal to say the least, but injuries have been piling up, with Kacar, Pal Dardai, and Sofian Chahed all with various degrees of injury- the latter two unlikely to play before the Frankfurt game, if not longer. Chipperfeld seems to be a solution to that.

In addition to Chipperfeld and Lazović, we’re linked to anything Swiss. Seriously, just about everything. Reto Ziegler, of Sampdoria (born in Geneva) is a possibility. Apparently, so is Ludovic Magnin of Stuttgart (born in Sion). I’ve also heard rumors about Alain Rochat, who was born in Quebec but plays for FC Zurich and the Swiss national team, and Behrang Safari, a Iranian-Swede with a fantastic name who plays for FC Basel. (Guilherme, currently of Almeria, who we’ve been linked to strongly, has nothing to do with Switzerland but is Brazilian, which is the other thing that we seem to look for in transfers.)

Besides being linked to half of Switzerland, Hertha’s been continuing on their training trip. Amine Chermiti did a photo shoot with a boat for some reason. We played a friendly against VfL Onsabruck, winning 1-0 thanks to an 86th-minute goal from Kaka (no, not that one, the one who no one is throwing £100 million at). Tomorrow we continue the Swiss theme with a friendly against one of everyone’s favorite names in Swiss football, Young Boys Bern.

And since it wouldn’t be a Hertha update without some story about Marko Pantelic, apparently he’s being linked to Hoffenheim, as a replacement for Ibisevic.