Three Games in Nine Days - Plus

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. 

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.

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.

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. ​

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.