BERLIN (AP) — Hertha Berlin is hoping yet another coaching change will solve the team’s ever recurring problems.
After four straight defeats in Germany’s second division, Hertha fired Cristian Fiél on Sunday. The club was reportedly set to announced Stefan Leitl as its new coach on Monday. Leitl was fired by league rival Hannover in December. His last game in charge was a draw with Hertha.
It will be the 11th coaching change since Pál Dárdai led Hertha to mid-table Bundesliga mediocrity in 2019. Ambition amid a huge spending splurge funded by investor Lars Windhorst prompted the club to try the likes of Jürgen Klinsmann, Felix Magath, Bruno Labbadia and others – Dárdai also returned for two more stints in charge – but Hertha struggled with relegation battles before it was finally demoted in 2023.
Dárdai last season and then Fiél this season were meant to lead the club back to the Bundesliga, but Hertha is languishing in 14th place in the 18-team division, closer to dropping to the third division than returning to the first.
What went wrong?
Fiél, who arrived in the summer after enjoying success with Nuremberg, was well-liked by the players at Hertha. They tried. On Saturday the team had 21 shots at goal against Fortuna Düsseldorf compared to the home side’s nine, but still lost 2-1.
“When you’ve lost four from five games after the winter break, you don’t have many arguments on your side,” Fiél said afterwards.
It was a similar story in each of the matches before – outshooting the opposition, yet still losing.
Hertha lost when playing well, but it also at times played badly, with frequent errors in defense, in attack, and everywhere in between.
Fiél had tried changing his goalkeeper in January to little avail. He wasn’t helped by the summer departures of top-scorer Haris Tabaković and defensive chief Marc Oliver Kempf. And arrivals haven’t had the desired impact.
What’s next?
Hertha is still floundering financially following a series of bad decisions going back to Windhorst’s first investments into the club in 2019. Windhorst sold his shares to Miami-based investment group 777 Partners in 2023, but 777 has since become embroiled in legal and financial turmoil. A court in Belgium last year ruled that all its assets in the country could be seized.
The implications for Hertha are uncertain, but it’s clear the club has little money for reinforcements – Fiél did not get his requested replacement for Tabaković in the winter transfer period.
Hertha in 2023 needed to restructure a 40-million-euro loan so it could be repaid two years later. It was enough to get its license from the German soccer federation for the 2023/24 season. But the money needs to be repaid in November this year.
Hertha BSC GmbH & Co. KGaA, the company behind the club, posted a consolidated net loss of 33.3 million euros last year for period from July 2023 through June 2024.
The club faces the dilemma of needing to sell its best players to service the debt, hurting its chances of promotion to the Bundesliga, which is more financially rewarding than the second division.
The likes of the 19-year-old Ibrahim Maza, arguably the club’s most promising young player, will likely have to leave in the summer despite signing contract extension last August to 2027.
The immediate future
Hertha still hadn’t announced a new coach by late Monday afternoon. Whoever takes charge – Dárdai is available for what would be a fourth stint – will make their debut at home to Nuremberg on Friday.
On Monday the local Berlin soccer federation extended a ban on all outdoor games until Thursday because of a blast of seriously cold weather in the German capital. It won’t affect Hertha, but the icy conditions will make it even more uncomfortable for the new Hertha coach to prepare the players for Friday’s match at Olympiastadion.
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Ciarán Fahey, The Associated Press
