Sunday May 30th 2021
Hertha extended with head coach
Dardai is allowed to continue doing his job
The savior will remain with the Big City Club: Pal Dardai will also be on the sidelines at Bundesliga club Hertha BSC in the coming season. This is quite surprising, because the popular coach’s contract extension was anything but certain.
Pal Dardai will also look after Hertha BSC as head coach in the coming season. As the Berlin Bundesliga club announced at its digital general meeting, the 45-year-old should continue his work and finally lead the club towards the top half of the table and, in the future, towards Europe. “It looks like we’re going into the new season together. Work and diligence will be there,” said Dardai in a video message.
At the end of January, Dardai was promoted from youth coach to head coach for the second time since 2015 as the successor to the hapless Bruno Labbadia. In the remaining 16 games of the season, the Berlin team managed to keep their league under their Bundesliga record player on the penultimate match day. Overall, the team remained unbeaten in eight games even after a two-week corona quarantine.
Nevertheless, the club’s leadership did not announce Dardai’s stay as head coach immediately after the rescue. Until recently, it was said that the Hungarian could be sent back to the youth department, for which he has a permanent contract as a club icon. The management around Carsten Schmidt and the new sports boss Fredi Bobic now trusts Dardai, who enjoys a high reputation in the club.
Dardai himself had shown himself to be totally relaxed as a cigar smoker in a now legendary ZDF interview and said, among other things: “It’s not my job to offer myself here or to do something. I’ll do my job, then we’ll see.” According to reports, the original contract as head coach would only have been extended until 2022 if Dardai had scored at least 24 points in the 16 games. He missed that mark by six points.
Somehow now Big City Club
The continuation of the boss job for Dardai comes as a surprise. Especially since in that “sports studio” interview he again clearly distanced himself from the philosophy of financier Lars Windhorst. “I’ve played here, I’ve never heard of Big City. We’re a German club, in the capital, in Berlin, for Berlin, that’s good,” said Dardai of the term Big City Club, which was coined by the million-dollar investor.
It is precisely these big goals with an international focus that Dardai should now initiate and thus also implement what the manager at the time Michael Preetz did not trust him in 2019. At that time Dardai had to leave because his name was associated with Hertha-Mittelmess before he had to step in as a savior 19 months later.
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