After Hertha’s 2.0 win against Eintracht Frankfurt during the week I spent a long weekend in Hamburg to explore the city and some of its surrounds but also, naturally, watch Hertha. The feeling going was upbeat with an impressive run of wins against HSV in recent times: 1:0, 3:0, 3:0, 1:0 and 3:0.
| I for one had high hopes that Hertha could consolidate their position and put a couple more points between the Old Lady and the following pack. The walk from the station to the Volksparkstadion took about twenty minutes but sipping a beer along the way added to the overall feeling of wellbeing. At that point I and for some time afterwards I had every reason to be optimistic. |  |
It was a bit of a grey afternoon and arriving at a grey Volksparkstation seemed to match somehow. The security at the stadium was pretty thorough and the search of my “other half’s” handbag (about the size of a large box of matches) felt like it took about five minutes! Quite what they thought could be concealed in a bag that size baffles me but hey, it needs to be done I guess!
| After going through security to the guest block the first thing we saw was a Hertha fan shop caravan” selling all of the normal scarves hats shirts etc. Naturally I was already equipped with my shirt and scarf so, although interesting to see what they had, this time I didn’t part with any more money! |  |
Things didn’t get off to a good start for the old lady and it didn’t really improve much. I wouldn’t pretend to know how it all went wrong but Hertha only retained 44% of the possession. That in itself is not necessarily a problem however, what clearly was a problem was the fact that Hertha had only three attempts on goal (two from Darida and one from Ibisevic) whilst HSV had fourteen! Passes went astray and it appeared, from this fans perspective, too many times the ball was just “hoofed” up forward only to be lost. Gone was the imperious style of performance Hertha demonstrated against Mainz before Christmas.
Hertha were living very dangerously and dependant on the Hamburg attack being equally flawed. In the second half however HSV had their breakthrough and Nicolai Muller scored twice to burst the Hertha bubble. Much as I hoped they would, Hertha didn’t come back and it finished 2:0 although the Old Lady, for the moment at least, remains in third place. The European slots at the top of the Bundesliga however are now looking incredibly tight.
| That long walk back to the station felt very, very long indeed that night but hey, onwards and upwards. This time last year I would have snatched your arm off had you offered third place no matter how insecure that place was! Next stop new turf in the Olympiastadion and Schalke 04. |  |
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