2024-05-11 07:52:10
Pál Dárdai is a club legend at Hertha BSC. However, the Hungarian is not the right man for promotion. A change is needed. The alternative is ready.
For Hertha BSC, after years of dramatic Bundesliga relegation battles until the bitter end in the last home game of the season, it’s about nothing anymore. When the Berliners host 1. FC Kaiserslautern on Saturday (from 1 p.m. in the live ticker on t-online), the relegated team can neither be promoted nor relegated. Hertha is in ninth place in the second division table. Direct promotion was just a hope, not a goal for the season.
In the coming season, the second year of the second division, Hertha has to be promoted. Managing director Thomas Herrich made this clear at the beginning of the year. There is “no alternative” to promotion, said the 60-year-old in the “Hertha Base” podcast. The reason for this is Hertha’s financial situation.
While the goal for the coming season is clear, the question of which coach you want to start the season with is unclear. The contract of Pál Dárdai, currently in office, expires in the summer. According to information from t-online, the contract will not be extended. The Hungarians were informed of this on Friday. “Bild” also reports on the separation after the end of the season.
The right decision. Because the development of the team under Dárdai is lacking. And you don’t have to look around for a suitable solution because it’s within your own ranks.
The wild ups and downs pose a mystery
A little over a year ago, the late club president Kay Bernstein proclaimed the “Berlin Way” as the club’s philosophy. The goal: integrate more young players from our own academy into the professional field, create more identification between fans and the team, and be more approachable. Hertha managed to do that this year. Also thanks to Pál Dárdai, who courageously recruited young Berlin talents and kept the mood in the squad positive.
But the “Berlin Way” should also lead back to the Bundesliga. This would require the development of the team, a foundation for the second year, the planned promotion season. However, Pál Dárdai did not succeed in this development. While the changeable start to the season was understandable given the change in the squad, the ups and downs since the middle of the first half of the season are a mystery.
Strong games such as in the cup against Mainz (3:0) or in the league home game against Rostock (4:0) were often followed by sobering performances. There was never a single time where there were more than two wins in a row. Sometimes clear leads were carelessly given away, several times only late in stoppage time, such as against Kiel (2:2) or Hanover (1:1).
“Feels like a wasted season”
Only if Hertha wins against Kaiserslautern and Osnabrück (34th matchday) will the Berliners have scored more points in the second half of the season than in the first half of the season. Defensively, the capital city team is already statistically weaker (26 goals conceded in the first half of the season, 30 in the second half of the season). There is also hardly any development to be seen in terms of football. Dárdai’s team struggles against deep defending teams. Both games against newly promoted Wehen Wiesbaden were lost, and in Rostock and Braunschweig Hertha also found it difficult to get into the opponent’s penalty area other than through crosses against relegation candidates.
And when the Berliners, who have the second-best offense in the league with 65 goals, started scoring goals, the defense often wobbled. Dárdai himself stated after the recent 2:4 in Elversberg: “We have had a similar situation all year long as today. We score enough goals, have enough chances to score, but defend poorly.”
At the end of April, captain Toni Leistner spoke of a “season that felt like a waste,” while teammate Andreas Bouchalakis was also certain in “Kicker” that “more would definitely have been possible.” Audience favorite Fabian Reese even chose a comparison from mythology. “That’s how Sisyphus must have felt. When I give everything day after day and together we don’t manage to carry the stone to the top of the mountain, but instead feel like we have to start all over again,” he wrote on Instagram.