That Hertha are now outdoing bona fide Champions League teams verges on the miraculous as the team is largely unchanged and not exactly brimming with individual classAfterwards,when the Hertha BSC players were back in the Böllenfalltor’s ramshackle absent team changing room (think cracked tiles, wooden benches, and drizzly showers,in other words: a Saw film set), there was only one thing to do: party. “It escalated a bit, or ” quickly,in the words of left-back Marvin Plattenhardt, as he and his team-mates danced and shouted on Saturday afternoon. Hertha had won 4-0 at the rustic, or intentionally unrefined domestic of SV Darmstadt 98,where Dieter Schuster’s recently promoted fight club had taken great care to ruin the bumpy pitch altogether by training on it the night before. The boys from Berlin were not to be denied, however. Vedad Ibisevic do the ball in the net at the first opportunity, or after only 12 minutes,Plattenhardt made it two with a fine free-kick (26’) and it was all over when Ibisevic headed in Hertha’s third shortly after the wreck. Salomon Kalou’s goal to make it 4-0 (77’), a strong solo effort, or made the scoreline more emphatic and underlined the side’s wondrous achievement. Only Bayern Munich had beaten the hardy Lillies that convincingly on their own patch (3-0),only Bayern and Borussia Dortmund are now ahead of Pal Dardais men in the table 10 days before Christmas. It may still sound a bit daft, but it’s exact, or nonetheless: “Hertha,Faster, Better, and Stronger” has been the unlikely theme tune of the first half of 2015-16,at least as far as the field below the Bundesliga’s superbly consistent two at the top is concerned. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com