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Hertha International - Bilbao

11/25/2017

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Hertha’s international adventures in Europe in the season were to in effect, come to an end in the Basque Country city of Bilbao.  I took the opportunity to follow my team on the last away game of the 2017 Europa League campaign and I didn’t regret a single second of it or a single Euro being spent.  Rumour has it about three thousand Hertha fans made the trip to the green coast of Spain although it felt like there were more to be honest.
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I flew back to England from Berlin after the ill-fated 
Mönchengladbach game and stayed in Sussex overnight before taking the train up to Heathrow. I then got on another plane, this time destined for Bilbao and I hoped at the time, Hertha’s European glory.  There were quite a few Hertha fans at the airport who I assume were waiting for connecting flights on to Bilbao after arriving from Berlin.  I gather from friends there were a lot at Stanstead as well.

​It was quite windy in London and the turbulence my take off was a bumpy one but the flight went well and was filled with anticipation for the day ahead.  My planning for the trip paid dividends as I bought the ticket for the bus into town and was able to go straight to the right bus stop.  
The bus stop incidentally, had already fallen victim to some Hertha stickers so I was certainly not the first to arrive in town.

The late November climate in Bilbao was a little kinder to the soul than Berlin or London.  At 22 degrees in the evening it felt balmy and the city was in full café culture mode with people sitting at tables outside sipping glasses of wine, cider or beer.   The locals said it was unseasonably warm but did I care?  Not one jot!  Through the wonders of social media I met up with a couple of friends from Berlin in a bar not too far from my hotel.  I enjoyed the company and the remarkably cheap as well as eminently potable red wine.  At the time I felt the evening boded well for the match day ahead.

​Buying in some essential supplies I had a bit of a wander around the old town of Bilbao.  There was some nice architecture and some enticing bars opening out onto squares where you could sit and enjoy a glass of fino in the sunshine.  Later I met up with another friend who had just flown in from Germany and we wandered around a bit more before heading to the meeting point in the centre of town.  
On the way another Hertha fan noticed the “Simonir” on the back of my shirt and called out to say hello.  He recognised the name from Twitter – Hi @Kassi6565! Hertha fans congregated at a meeting point in a central park area before setting off the stadium.  The support for our team started as the “Fanmarsch” got underway with singing and chanting being pretty well non-stop until after the game.  ​​A taster of the Fanmarsch can been seen here
The atmosphere in the ground was superb from the start.  At least in the guest block it was because the home fans didn’t go to their seats until the last minute.  The Hertha fans stayed on their feet for the game for the most part singing chanting and hopping all coordinated by the Capo.  A wonderful experience and a little snippet can be seen in the video below.
The game started off well enough from our end and we had the better of the first half.  The away fans erupted when Leckie knocked in the first goal in the 26th minute.  I’m not sure my throat will ever recover!  There was not quite so much activity when a penalty was awarded to Bilbao and the resulting equaliser.  The roller coaster continued with another goal from Davie Selke and jubilation in the away block – high fives all around and going into half time happy fans.

After the break it was a different game.  Athletic Club were stronger and better organised in the second half pressing Hertha.  The second equaliser came from yet another penalty (how many have Hertha conceded) and it was uphill from there on as a draw was not enough for us.  With just eight minutes to go the European bubble was burst as Williams scored for Athletic Club.  There wasn’t enough time to come back but still enough to rue the mistakes that resulted in the two penalties that cost us the game.
On the way away from the stadium after the match the bars in the streets were teaming with people enjoying the unseasonably warm evening and locals celebrating their success.  The locals I encountered were friendly and wanted to have a chat about the game.  They were perhaps slightly bemused by this strange Englishman travelling to all of these Hertha games.  Having said this one of the guys we spoke to also supported Aston Villa as he studied in England in his youth. 
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Well my Hertha International experience was nearly over with only Östersund at home in Berlin to play.  I returned to London on the morning after the game to find England twenty degrees colder than Bilbao.  I had to kill a few hours in London before I could get my train home and it was so cold!  ​

​I put my Hertha shirt on over another shirt and my scarf around my neck but hey it was the memories of my European adventure that kept me warm.  Until the next time.
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Three Games in Nine Days - Plus

11/7/2017

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I had a longer than normal stay in Berlin during the end of October to the start of November.  It was a busy time for Hertha with three games in three different competitions over nine days.  A gruelling experience for the team and at times, but also the fans.
The first game was on Wednesday evening in the DFB Pokal against struggling FC Köln who had only picked up two points in nine games.  The figures said that we should have easily been able to overcome such an opponent but that would not be Hertha’s way.  
The game started in the early evening on a Wednesday so it was at best tricky for many home fans let alone away supporters to get the Olympiastadion.  The attendance was disappointing in terms of numbers if not support.  The support and atmosphere started pretty much as normal but the game appeared to drift away from the script. 
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Perhaps its best not to dwell on a 1:3 loss to an opponent glued to the foot of the table.

I know some of the results in Europe and at home was hard to take but the reaction by some of the fans by half time and certainly the end of the game was far more disappointing than the attendance.  The whistles started at half time and then there was the banner held up by one ultra-group referring to the incident on New Year’s Eve at Cologne Cathedral was a disgrace in my opinion.  It appears whenever Hertha find themselves in the spotlight somebody does something to show the club in a bad light firstly against Rostock and now against Cologne.  The whistles blasted towards the team after the game after the game was no way for fans, supporters to act.

Then, just three days later Hertha faced HSV, the team I have heard described as “the points provider”

​Surely the recent trend could not continue and to be fair this game went a little better and almost followed the script to the letter.  The game provided three valuable points to help solidify a mid-table position for Hertha.
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There was a more respectable turnout for this Saturday afternoon game with over 52,000 supporters in the Olympiastadion having said that, there were about 9000 HSV supporters amongst them.  Quite what the banner showing a giant gnome was all about in the away section I don’t know ;)
The end result was a lot of Hertha fans going home in a far happier frame of mind that night leaving a picturesque Olympiastadion in the evening light.
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Then, five days later Hertha returned to European competition to face FC Zorya Luhansk on the Thursday night in front of just 20,000 supporters.  To date this season The Old Lady had not covered herself in glory on the European stage so perhaps not too much was expected beyond the normal pre-match wildly unrealistic optimism of the Hertha fan. (Well, this one anyway).  This game was perhaps the coming of age for this year’s key signing Davie Selke.  He scored two important goals for the club without reply from the nomadic team from Ukraine.  There were lots of high fives all around in the stadium especially after Davie’s second goal dribbling around the keeper.  The victory and its associated three left The Old Lady with a glimmer of hope in Europe with two games left to play in Group J.   As I’m going to the remaining matches in both Bilbao and Berlin having I want a glimmer of hope.
The Plus one game was the truly bizarre game against Wolfsburg in the Volkswagen Arena last weekend.  I can honestly say I’ve never seen a game quite like it.  For once it wasn’t just because of the spooky green lights put on in the stadium before the match or the cardboard cut-outs I many of the seats.  After the success earlier in the week and Vedad Ibisevic scored in the first minute I thought – well this is alright!  It was not going to stay like that but what happened was a bit of a roller coaster.  The back of Rune’s net bulged twice to be swiftly followed by tweets of dismay only to find the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) has disallowed the goal.  In both cases it was without doubt the correct decision but to have two calls like that was pretty surreal.  The unreal feeling of it all was compounded by Gomez hitting the bar with a penalty.  The footballing gods were indeed smiling on us for a while at least. 
The dream didn’t continue however as first Malli and then Gomez scored and the bubble was burst.  It was not the end of the drama however as the man who I said was a good defender but lacked the attacking threat of Brooks won his duel with the ex-Hertha player and headed the ball home to draw us level again just after half time.  Spirits dived on the 60th minute when Origi left us a goal behind.  Then that man Selke saved us an away point with just seven minutes to play to finish what turned out to be a truly remarkable game for all sorts of reasons.
One last little snippet that relates indirectly to my last post about the “Bend A Knee” statement from Hertha.  November the 9th saw the 79th “anniversary” of the Kristallnacht.  That fateful night in 1938 is thought by many to mark the start of the Holocaust which took the lives of so many Berliners.   
The murder of these Berliners is marked by individual brass plaques (Stolpersteine) set into pavements where they used to live before the Nazi reign of terror.  The reason I bring this up now is a number of Hertha fan took the prompt of the anniversary of the Kristallnacht to visit some of the Stolpersteine in the city and polish the brass as an act of remembrance for the victims of the terror. ​
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One of these included the former team Doctor for Hertha (Dr Hermann Horwitz) who died in Auschwitz.  Another sign, as if one were needed, that Hertha now stands for tolerance and against those who would gloss over the horrors of the past and promote similar ideologies.
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