Sunday 19th December 2021
Gala against BVB
Korkuts Hertha repairs the “total failure”
By Sebastian Schneider, Berlin
Somewhat surprisingly, Tayfun Korkut becomes a coach at Hertha BSC. With the 3-2 win over Borussia Dortmund, he leads the Berliners into a carefree winter break. After the 4-0 swat against Mainz during the week, it didn’t necessarily look like it.
“Cut everything out” is a phrase that is often used in football. Anyone who watches Tayfun Korkut in the 3-2 success of his Hertha against Borussia Dortmund gets an impression of what that could mean. Regardless of whether it is a failed cross, a set piece or a winning duel: the coach is annoyed, claps his hands, indicates moves – and walks up and down the sideline in the drizzle of Berlin. The mileage of Hertha’s six Santiago Ascacibar appears in the statistics (12.4 kilometers), but not that of his coach.
The sideline use of the new trainer drives the team on. In front of the 5,000 people present who gathered in the pre-Christmas Olympic Stadium, the blue-whites tear off more kilometers than the Dortmund team, sprint more often and win more duels. The result is the three points. While BVB coach Marco Rose can hardly hide his displeasure after the game, Korkut jokes that he wanted to prevent double-packer Marco Richter’s hat trick by replacing him (“No, he said: coach, it’s enough”).
That Hertha will overwinter relatively carefree in eleventh place in the table cannot really be guessed at half time. For 45 minutes, it looks like BVB will repeat the concept from the Fürth game: with a poor performance, bring a happy lead over time. It is the Berliners who score the first goal of the evening in the 15th minute. Peter Pekarik crosses from the right, newcomer Myziane Maolida completes in the middle. Cheers in the stands. But that quickly turns into a mixture of amazement and frustration. The Cologne cellar reports. When hit, Hertha’s Ishak Belfodil’s foot is offside and it irritated Dortmund’s Axel Witsel, the VAR decided. A quarter of an hour later there is nothing to complain about Julian Brandt’s goal – the halftime lead for BVB.
The “total failure” of Mainz
Big panic does not break out in the Hertha cabin. “We knew if we kept playing that we would then have our options,” said Korkut after the game about the break. This is how it happens: The Dortmunders break in after the restart. Suddenly it is Belfodil, whose game doesn’t necessarily depend on his athleticism, who is too fast for BVB substitute defender Witsel and scores the equalizer (51st). The Korkut-Elf plays into a frenzy. Richter’s remarkable double pack (57th and 69th) makes the Berlin fans sing and dream of Europe. The late 3-2 connection goal of the substitute Dortmund Tigges does not change anything (83rd).
“Going into the winter break with a win is always very, very important,” said Korkut after the game. By that he means the past seven days. The 2-0 win against Bielefeld was followed by the 4-0 debacle in Mainz on Tuesday, which brought back bad memories. The blue-whites went under without a chance, the mood threatened to change. After the game, Kevin-Prince Boateng analyzed: “That was a total failure of the team. I was also a total failure. Everyone was a total failure.” During the short week of training, Korkut tried to “erase” the debacle from the players’ minds.
That makes the success against BVB all the more important. Not only do the Berliners jump away from relegation places. With two defeats from four games, things could have been unsettled before the start of the second half. And so you can talk about other topics after the game. “You saw what is possible, but that doesn’t mean that we can assume that it will be accessed every week,” says Korkut. There is still a lot of work to be done. “In the end it’s always the same: If you really want to achieve something in life, you have to do something for it.”
Joy of playing and courage
The new coach has been in office for almost three weeks. It is the sixth since summer 2019. And it was probably also the most surprising change of coach. Sports manager Fredi Bobic decided after the derby bankruptcy against Union that it should not go on with club icon Pal Dardai. After the Augsburg draw, there was then the expulsion. That the choice fell on Korkut was all the more surprising for both sides. Hanover, Kaiserslautern, Leverkusen, Stuttgart: He didn’t stay with any club that long. There are also more rewarding missions for a coach than Hertha. After all, the club is stuck somewhere between European ambitions and fear of relegation in permanent upheaval.
Nevertheless, the self-proclaimed trainer chameleon took on the task. In three of his four games you saw a lot of approaches to what he intends to do with Hertha, says Korkut: “With a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of courage, regardless of the score.” It works against Dortmund. Even with the decimated squad, which lacked important top performers such as Captain Dedryck Boyata, Suat Serdar, Boateng or Stevan Jovetic. This forced Korkut to “do handicrafts”, as he calls it after the game. This also has advantages: “I have to say that after the four games I was able to get to know everyone.” The team implemented his ideas “very, very well”. Borussia’s poor performance is likely to have helped.
And so it happens that it is Erling Haaland, who is harmless for over 90 minutes, who flees into the dressing room after the final whistle with downcast eyes. Today others do their lap of honor. The blue-whites celebrate in front of the heavily thinned east curve and enjoy every moment again. It is the last game for both teams before the winter break, which should officially be over by early January. But a look at England, where the Omikron wave is piling up and a series of games in the Premier League have to be canceled, does not give a good idea. Nobody knows how long the interruption will really last.