In the first relegation game between Hertha BSC and Hamburger SV, the situation is reversed. The guests from the Hanseatic city play like a first division team, the Berliners don’t. chants are sung. However, coach Felix Magath makes his players a surprising offer.
Felix Magath has already spoken in the past: “We played in the first division all last season and HSV played in the second division all season. Should I tell you something else?” said the 68-year-old interim coach of the Berliners after the 0: 1 (0: 0) against HSV and located the capital club in this strange interim period of relegation: “To keep it that way, we just have to improve on Monday in Hamburg.”
An increase in performance is urgently needed if the Berliners want to be a second division team from next Tuesday after three consistently chaotic seasons. Hamburger SV dominated the game in the packed Berlin Olympic Stadium. Because it was the case that HSV played with the self-confidence of a rushing player and Hertha with that of a staggering player. Quite normal: The second division team had traveled to the capital with the recommendation of five wins at the end of the season. Hertha was waiting there with three match points already awarded for relegation.
They didn’t make it against Arminia Bielefeld, not against FSV Mainz 05 and not against Borussia Dortmund. Several times, staying in the league was considered secured until the final minutes of the game, then the tide turned against Hertha, who missed chances, conceded goals and had to watch helplessly as something always happened and they got into trouble again.
The Berliners were fearful against Hamburg, gave the visitors the ball and for a long time remained without conceding a goal in this game at a tranquil level. The debutant between the posts, Oliver Christensen had replaced the injured Marcel Lotka, had little to do and then had to watch Ludovit Reis slip the ball over the slipper and thus into the goal from a cross.
“I then also thought to myself: ‘That can’t be true. It’s such a filthy thing again.’ But it is how it is. With goals like that, we have to do everything we can to counteract them in the game,” said ex-captain Niklas Starck after his last home game in the Olympic Stadium: “We still have one game left, settled or not, We just have to give it our all in one game, it’s a final for us.”
A final in which Hertha goes as an outsider after a number of sporting blows and the chaos next to the pitch. Magath, the grinder, saw himself more in the role of psychologist after the game. Spoke about the fact that he now had to “raise up” his players again, because of course they were “disappointed” after the last few weeks. There is “a lot to talk about” and less training, and if so, you might have to “practice” more on how the harmless offensive can be breathed a little more punch into.
“You can’t bake players,” said Magath: “Players are the way they are. Some are strong in tackles, like Santi Ascasibar, who was suspended today, and there are players who aren’t. But I can’t do that for them reproach.” A sentence, also addressed to board member Fredi Bobic, who is partly responsible for this squad. But before the shards are cleaned up, Hertha is in any case a turbulent general meeting in the house, it is again at least 90 minutes against Hamburg. There was a lot of talk on both sides of a “first half” and Magath, the new psychologist, was hoping for the return of the twelfth man. “Today Hamburg were the happier side, why shouldn’t we be on Monday?” he asked.
“This is the purposeful optimism of a sporty shipwrecked man who clings to the last verbal plank,” local broadcaster RBB threw back at him, setting the tone for the media settlement with Hertha. “This club no longer has any strength,” wrote the “Spiegel” and concluded: “After all the excitement, Hertha may just have to go into the forest, the “Tagesspiegel” stated: “Hertha didn’t lack commitment, but the playful Wealth isn’t enough to turn the game around.”
The reactions were as devastating as they were apt. The disintegration of the club on all levels hardly allows any other conclusion: Hertha BSC acts like a second division team on and off the field. Only a miracle will save the old lady from the capital from falling into the abyss.
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