Hertha BSC Berlin Preview

Hertha BSC

Coach: Lucien Favre

Lucien Favre is in Berlin now for two years and did improved the team a lot. The 4^th position last season was the best ranking for ten years.

He has his ideas of football which he always follows. For example he had many problems with Pantelic because he did play for himself and not for the team or just rarely did it.

I will follow this with interest, since he really does a lot with this in my opinion average team.
A good sign for all Hertha fans was that he did not accept any offers from other clubs which shows that he identifies with Hertha Berlin!

Money spend for transfers: 1.050.000 €
Money earned from transfers: 7.150.000 €

Balance: +6.100.000 €

Atmosphere during training camp&test matches:

The preparation was acceptable, nothing more - nothing less.

Wins against teams such as Budapest (2:0) and Union Berlin (5:3), but also some draws against small teams such as Ulm (1:1) and St. Pauli (2:2).

Big problems in defence, while the offensive work was done pretty well.

Possible line-ups & tactics:












Most likely:
1. 4-4-2 (4-2-2-2); LB,CB,CB,RB,DM,DM,ROM,LOM,ST,ST

Aim set by club:

To get similar success compared to last season.

Team check:

Goalkeeper: 9/10

Drobny was one of the best goalkeepers last season.

A few matches were he safed his team the win with amazing safes.

Only the second keeper did not convinced when Drobny was missing and that can be a problem during a whole season.

Defence: 5/10

The defence did not convince at all and on paper it looks weak too.

The only good defender is Arne Friedrich in my opinion who will play centre back together with Steve van Bergen. Simunic left and Bergen will have to fill that position. I doubt that he will do it with the same good performances as I remember back van Bergen doing lots of mistakes in defence. Backups are Kaka who was not able to perform good when he got chances last season and Janker from Hoffenheim.

Right back will be Piszcek and on the left side we will see Marc Stein. Both are average players in my opinion. Stein has still some potential to improve though.

Midfield: 7/10

In the midfield Hertha has some very good talented players.
I especially like Gojka Kacar whom I rate really high and without doubt this guy could play at any big club if he gets no injury.

He plays as defensive midfield, has a good overview, good tackling, passing and good shots.
Together with him we have Cicero on defensive midfield position.
This guy, same as Kacar, did show in many matches that he is capable of playing high level football.

Right midfield, Ebert. A young guy born in Berlin who improved during the period he was coached by Favre. Still a lot to learn but he is doing good improvements.

Left midfield, Maximilian Nicu. He has to show a lot of running work, same as Ebert and we could also see him performing over average last season.

A young midfield, with some good backups such as Dardai (experienced defensive midfield), Lucio who plays left midfield as well but who was injured very long and Lustenberger who also plays in defensive midfield but who was to work on his strength a bit.

Striker: 6/10

Pantelic left, Voronin left.
They will miss this quality during the season a lot.

Of course Raffael and "King" Arthur (from Bielefeld) are also capable of scoring some goals, but if those have some problems there are only Chermiti and Domovchiyski left.

You cannot compare those yet to Pantelic and Voronin and we all know how Hertha won their matches last season.
Just remember back the Leverkusen match where Hertha had 2 shots on goal while Leverkusen had 24 shots. Hertha won 1:0 - Voronin scored the goal.

Raffael and Arthur Wichniarek will have a lot to do this season.

Total: 7/10

My prognosis:

Without any doubt the last season was superb for Hertha BSC.
However, considering the fact that they let Simunic, Pantelic and Voronin go, they will miss a lot of quality really.

Compared to the other teams (Bayern, Wolfsburg e.g.) they have no chance this season to repeat the same success.

In order to surprise us all once again the defense players must improve compared to last season, the midfield has to be on very good form and the strikers have to be same effective as Voronin and Pantelic in past.

AS I said, I doubt it and I would rate Hertha behind the top 9 teams.
10^th position this season in my opinion.