It's not easy being a Hertha BSC supporter. For years. In the pre-season, the club from Berlin's Westend narrowly escaped relegation, then regrouped and are happier now. Not more successful. Our guest author is desperate before the derby.
I'm a fan of success. Every football fan is. In football, every second is about success: victory. The gate. The celebrated tackle on the outside line. The VAR decision for your team. The cheers! Success is the essence of the football game. You go because of him. You step out of the opera happy because it gives you an aesthetic intoxication. You come out of the stadium happy when your team has won a shitty kick against a Werkstadt club like Wolfsburg 1-0 with a deflected shot on goal.
At least that's how I imagine it. How nice that would be. Your team gets into every duel, running, toiling, sliding, banging into the opponent. And then, on top of that, if everything is going well - okay. Then you can play nice. At least that's what I heard. Sometimes I also see snippets of other kicks, Premier League or something. I can't stand it for long. How skillful it all looks! I, on the other hand, am a Herthaner. If you love the city, then you love the club. Born in Mitte, 1892, grew up in Wedding. The full aroma! Schulle, Mampe, Schnippelwurst. Hertha is Berlin, Berlin is Hertha. Even the dolts in the GDR understood that back then. After nobody really wanted to love their Stasi club BFC, they simply founded another club, as a Hertha copy, in order to make friends with their population, as Hans Modrow once explained in an interview. And they gave it the name of a traditional club that had made its way to the West: Union.
We have to play against this imitation on Saturday. After we only made a fool of ourselves on Tuesday. I use the few hours I have between the low blows to write this text.
Of course, the Hertha copy for hipster kids will also destroy us on Saturday. We didn't deserve anything else. Because if there's one thing you can rely on at Hertha, it's this: in the end, everyone shrugs their shoulders and asks for another shot. This is Balin. Hertha goes down in Bochum. Afterwards, everyone posts how fun the train ride was. Hertha is massacred by Wolfsburg: they outdo each other with fatalistic jokes. The players in the interviews don't know exactly either and are looking forward to the reappraisal. Nobody ever kicks over a ton, nobody chokes the reporter in anger.
Because none of them are fans of success in Berlin. It's partly the Berlin way of life, I really like it: In the end, there are always more important things. In the end, what counts is that we sit together in the pub and chat. Partly it is resignation. Hertha has not won anything for almost a hundred years. As a Hertha player, you've forgotten what success feels like. You learned to love the third half. When the game is finally over and the fun begins.
And I hate that. I'm deeply frustrated after games. I kick out the frustration on the way home. The buddies then stand somewhere at the booth to drink away the game. I kick, kick and kick, shaking my head, snorting. I'm a fan of success. I don't want any more. I don't want to have to identify myself with Fredi Bobic! If he succeeds, okay. But like this... Dardai, the legend? pushed away. Arne Friedrich? fuchikato. The great junior academy? Oh, after many successful years the manager preferred to move away. Berlin blood? Kevin-Prince Boateng was taken out of early retirement and films were made with him in which he sells kebabs. A new team was supposed to grow around the doner kebab seller, somehow. A great concept for the state league! In the here and now, the players stagger disoriented across the pitch and past the substitutes' bench, where Prince shouts his tips.
Sometimes I don't understand my Hertha friends, maybe I haven't been in Berlin long enough. This reconciliation. This laissez faire, laissez go under. Recently, after years of crisis, Hertha elected a new president, the options were - in Berlin, in 2022 - Frank Steffel and Kay Bernstein, who suddenly popped up, who always wears a Hertha jacket and analyzed the situation on his campaign page: "Our beloved old lady calls, no: she cries out for help!" and gave instructions like "The greeting from the Herthaner is Ha Ho He". (How Hertha women should greet each other remained unclear, women did not appear on the site.) Bernstein was then elected president by 1,670 people from an association of around 40,000 members. You can only vote if you sacrifice a whole day for Hertha, with hours of speeches and debates, with a mourning string quartet for the deceased. Will you be able to vote online next time or by postal vote? Certainly too modern for a screaming old lady.
Since Kay Bernstein has been showing off his beautiful jacket everywhere, many of my Hertha buddies are happier again. He constantly reports goosebumps and emotions, he emphasizes that a club is like a family and orders that everyone at Hertha now has to be on first-name terms; sometimes he cries in the stands.
Meanwhile, the team goes under. And while you watch these people stumble in our blue and white dress, you think: which player last triggered emotions in me... Peter Niemeyer (retired in 2015)? Vedad Ibisevic (retired in 2020)? The last ones were Rune Jarstein (disgusted) and Jordan Torunarigha (chased to Belgium). So you sit there and stare at the screen. My buddy in the upper ring had a spot free for me against Wolfsburg. I gave up. At home I watched Team Bobic embarrass themselves to the bone, while parts of the east curve lived out their great emotions by pissing the potential new investor in the knee.
Those are the moments when you think - very quietly, very secretly - shouldn't it just be the intravenous millions and millions that have soulless projects like Leipzig, Wolfsburg, Leverkusen ahead of us? Is perhaps their great advantage that they are not concerned with cosiness, not with Frank Zander and the French fries stand at half past three in the night? But that they are tight, dull, purposeful - in short: that they are fans of success?
The last friend of success at Hertha was CEO Carsten Schmidt: he wanted to put everything in the club to the test, set goals. Then he resigned for personal reasons. As soon as he was gone, the Berlin sausages were back. CEO? Someone from the outside pulling the reins? Or how about some football experts in senior management, except just Bobic? How about if the man in the jacket made a few sporting guidelines instead of drowning everything in sentiment? How about a plan?
oh Doesn't have to be. We haven't had one in the last 130 years either. But there are beautiful songs about the fact that Hertha will forever be Berlin's problem child, and how life goes on anyway. A friend invited me to the derby against the copy, really nice. But can I still take it? Week after week, year after year: Saturday gherkins and head scratching, anticipation then again from Wednesday. Next Saturday, next shit. Every few weeks the gentlemen pull themselves together. Bottom line: relegation, vacation. The fans celebrate. But what?
I would like to celebrate too. Successes. Success doesn't have to be a championship. It doesn't even have to be a win. You just want to see who gave their all. There players come up from the academy and they develop. Twelfth place every year, all good. From time to time maybe European Cup. Or at least that you leave the stadium after the derby and know: Okay, it wasn't enough for the people from Köpenick. But we can sit upright on the subway home while the hipsters and nostalgics from the old east part of town smirk around us. That would be a success. Just that you like to wear the scarf through the city. And that's why I won't go there on Saturday.
