Why Berliners keep failing

A few days ago, Felix Magath, the coach of the Berlin Bundesliga club Hertha BSC, dictated a few rules of conduct to his team, which they have to heed in the final games of the season. In principle, it was a matter of course, things that every reasonably successful professional team has internalized.

But Hertha Berlin is not a halfway successful professional team, because otherwise Felix Magath would not have been hired as a kind of paramedic at the beginning of March. And so the rules sounded like slogans aimed at the relegation battle in which the team had to prove themselves: “Hertha is above everything” – that was the first principle. “We instead of I”, “Work and fight instead of dreaming” and “Dialogue instead of digital” are the other three.

Magath’s signing is a worrying sign

Such unusual pedagogy seems appropriate in Berlin at the moment. Although the team luckily won against VfB Stuttgart at the weekend, the 4-1 defeat in the derby against Union Berlin two weeks earlier was downright disturbing, especially as it revealed how deep the gap between the team and their supporters is. Fans urged the players to get up after the final whistle to get rid of the club jerseys – an act of humiliation on the open stage.

Felix Magath once led Bayern Munich and VfL Wolfsburg to championship titles, but he has long been seen as worn out in the Bundesliga. Taken in and of itself, his commitment seems like a highly questionable sign: How can it be that Hertha is in such an awkward position again?

The signs were more favorable than they have been for a long time – at least as far as the financial framework is concerned: Lars Windhorst, a German investor with a dazzling reputation, has acquired shares in the club for a total of 374 million euros since he became known in the summer of 2019. Since then, Hertha has spent the money lavishly – and yet the club is currently only ranked 15th, just short of the barrage.

Hertha seems like a mystery to quite a few supporters and a number of experts. There is constant talk of great potential when it comes to Berlin football, from the city with its 3.8 million inhabitants and the surrounding area, where there is no competition. We hear again and again that these should actually be ideal conditions; Conditions under which a Bundesliga club could thrive.

Hertha is still a West Berlin club

At first glance this may be true, but the potential seems immense indeed. But Berlin is not just any big city. Berlin is a city of newcomers, who often come from West Germany. Berlin is also a city of travelers who don’t stay long. Berlin is also a city of expats, for whom the old homeland is closer than the new one.

Those who like football bring clear preferences with them to their new place of residence. Those who come from Hamburg will have no trouble finding a bar around which St. Pauli fans gather at the weekend. People from the Palatinate don’t have to look far for a bar where a hard core of supporters of 1. FC Kaiserslautern meets. Even exotic preferences like those for VfB Stuttgart can be successfully satisfied in Berlin.

Hertha cannot win these supporters. The club is still deeply rooted in its West Berlin milieu. The author of these lines can still well remember a conversation when a (new) colleague reported to him about the bad mood of a native Berliner he knew: “Because Hertha lost, he’s done. You won’t believe it: he’s actually a Hertha fan!”

Klinsmann’s departure is unprecedented

The fan as exotic in your own city? It’s definitely not quite like that. And yet new Berliners sympathize more with Union than with Hertha. The touch of the unconventional surrounds the club from East Berlin in the third Bundesliga year. Hertha, on the other hand, seems relatively conventional – unless you appreciate the spectacle that has been performed since the investor Windhorst got involved. It was turbulent, absurd amounts of money were spent, coaches and managers were fired without things getting any better.

The way in which coach Jürgen Klinsmann took to his heels two years ago in a cloak-and-dagger operation, not without attesting to Hertha’s dilettantism on many levels, is without counterexample in the Bundesliga.

Now that the dilemma is obvious that Hertha is where it has been so often, people like to remember the phrase Windhorst used to introduce himself in Berlin: he wanted to establish Hertha as a “Big City Club” in Berlin, said Windhorst when he announced his commitment. Even then, this statement sounded strangely unrelated to the industry. And that’s exactly what Windhorst is. He hadn’t had anything to do with football before, he saw Hertha above all as a reasonable investment opportunity.

Windhorst is a character for whom the adjective flamboyant seems just right. The “Handelsblatt” once wondered: “Meanwhile, Windhorst has gone through several bankruptcies, but it still has a good reputation with many business people.”

The investor opposes the President

But the reputation has suffered over the years. Hertha recently made headlines again because of its investor, when it was rumored that Windhorst’s shares had been pledged. This was denied quite energetically, but anyone who felt resentment towards Windhorst saw it as confirmed.

It also fits into the image that some Berliners have of their patrons. Accordingly, Windhorst does not care about sentimentality. Hertha feels this. The activist investor does not like the power structure within the club, he openly opposes the president Werner Gegenbauer and calls on the members to vote him out at the annual general meeting in May.

In fact, there is also a lot of resentment among the supporters towards the incumbent. Since Gegenbauer took over in 2008, he has had to experience two relegations, and some say he is partly responsible for them. The President held on to the unsuccessful manager Michael Preetz. As early as 2012, nine years before Hertha finally parted ways with Preetz, the Berlin Tagesspiegel was sober: “Discussing Preetz with Gegenbauer makes no sense.”

Whether Windhorst succeeds in the coup is questionable. As in general, the commitment in Berlin, not only in retrospect, seems high risk. Although Windhorst was not familiar with the football situation in Berlin, it didn’t take much to realize that Hertha might not be what makes a long-term investment attractive. It has not had outstanding management, has not been massively profitable, and has no room for tremendous growth. Rather, the investor operates in an extremely emotional environment that often eludes rational decisions.

Helmut Kohl wished Hertha success

Now targets are readjusted. And some will remember that it wasn’t the first time that West Berlin football sounded like a new beginning, a future, a vision. That’s how it was almost exactly a quarter of a century ago when Hertha was promoted back to the Bundesliga after many years in the second division. The designated capital is finally getting a club of stature again, said an important man at the time. It was Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor. He wished that Hertha would again become a top address in German football.

The former chancellor and today’s Hertha investor share a short period of mutual exchange: Windhorst was once considered the child prodigy of the German economy. The Chancellor invited the then 18-year-old to accompany him on a trip to Asia. Windhorst, Kohl praised the enterprising teenager, could be a role model for an entire generation with his entrepreneurial spirit.

The Big City Club. A “first address” in German football. Did both men misjudge the possibilities in Berlin? Kohl’s pious wish remained unfulfilled, but at least it had no consequences. Windhorst, however, could be expensive for his commitment.

But couldn’t he have been warned? At that time, shortly after he had acquired the reputation of a juvenile entrepreneur, important people had already been mistaken that big things could be achieved in Berlin football. In 1994, the marketing agency Ufa, which belongs to the Bertelsmann Group, saved the then second division club from bankruptcy; as a result, Ufa acquired the marketing rights to the club.

The last time Hertha shone with coach Favre

The calculations of the merchants did not work out, Hertha remained a regional factor in the years after promotion, whose greatest success was fourth place under the direction of Swiss coach Lucien Favre in 2009.

Such an erratic association can confuse even seasoned commentators. The “Süddeutsche Zeitung” recently rejected a crooked analogy just in time: “It makes sense to compare the Hertha BSC football club with BER Airport, but it’s wrong.” The paper comes to the conclusion that Hertha’s big dilemma is the sense of entitlement, which differs significantly from reality.

Such a gap between what should be and what should be is not unusual in Berlin, indeed it seems to belong genuinely to this city, which was never quite clear about its role and its actual meaning. This incompleteness still contributes significantly to the appeal of a metropolis that is not a cosmopolitan city. But she also tempted to lose measure. Undoubtedly, Hertha is also driven by vain world-class ambitions that fail to recognize the club’s deep roots in the West Berlin milieu.

The balancing act of creating a brand that radiates far beyond national borders, but at the same time does not alienate the regular audience, sometimes leads to painful strains. And it doesn’t matter whether Magath manages to stay up in the league as a crisis helper: Another opportunity to take the big step has been missed. So Hertha appears like a strangely unlucky player in football monopoly, who is repeatedly dealt the same playing card, which has a depressing effect: back to go!