Sieglos No More

Hertha won their first of the new year’s friendlies on Saturday (previous entries: a 0-1 loss to Grasshoppers Zurich, a loss on penalties to Rapid Vienna after a 2-2 draw, and a 0-0 draw to TUS Koblenz), beating Kaiserslauten 1-0 at their Fritz Walter stadium.

It was a day of firsts, with new signing Gojko Kacar making his debut on what was also his 21st birthday. Apparently he wasn’t the most fit, but that only comes with playing time. And, in good news, Raffael scored his first goal for the club in the 28th minute. Let’s hope that it’s many more.

Hertha were without top scorer Marko Pantelic, captain Arne Friedrich, and young hope Patrick Ebert, who were all staying behind in Berlin for treatment (cross your fingers that they’ll be fit when the season starts).

Also not coming to Kaiserslautern was Gilberto. According to the Sky Sports ticker I was watching yesterday, he was in London having a medical at Tottenham Hotspur. And according to lots of sources, it’s about to be finalized and announced and all of that. I was hoping for something today, but I’ve yet to see an official announcement. Hopefully my writing about it hasn’t jinxed the move. The fee is still wildly different depending on where you’re reading, but I’m all for any sort of fee on him, as well as freeing up wage money. He was asking for a lot of money from Hertha and he hasn’t been proving lately that he’s worth it. So good luck, Gilberto (but not too much).

Not that Gilberto leaving is the end of Hertha’s transfer-market dealings. Even my local newspaper has picked up on Arguez for some reason, saying that he’s been sold to Hertha. Again, no announcement, but he did play a half in Kaiserslautern and it looks as if it really will happen. Hopefully soon.

Valeri Domowtschiski is undergoing a medical check. He’s a 21-year-old Bulgarian striker from Levski Sofia and we apparently have beaten out Blackburn Rovers for him. He’s scored 55 goals in 122 appearances for Levski and would add to Raffael, Pante, and theoretically Andre Lima in attack.

And just in case you thought that Domowtschiski was too easy for Americans like me to spell, Hertha’s preferred replacement for Gilberto is VfL Wolfsburg’s veteran Polish midfielder Jacek Krzynowek. He’s 31 years old, same age as Gilberto, and has lots of Bundesliga experience. So it’s not all kids, then, and the management is smart enough to know that a young team needs to have some old heads in it too, especially if it’s close to a perilous position.

So if everything rumored to pass comes to pass before Thursday, we’d be up three midfielders (Fejsa, Arguez, and Krzynowek) and a striker (Domowtschiski). This doesn’t count the striker and midfielder already signed. We’ve been pretty busy, I guess you’d say.

Category: Team News, match reports, transfer news

Tags: match reports, Team News, transfer news

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