LBy his own admission, before Felix Magath took over the team from Hertha BSC, he already had a heart for the Berlin Bundesliga club. In 2012, Hertha was clammy again, but urgently needed new players. Magath, who was still the coach and manager of VfL Wolfsburg at the time, gave the searchers his football pro Peter Pekarik “almost for nothing”, as he said on Monday when he was introduced as the new coach.
From this Tuesday onwards, Pekarik, who at the age of 35 is still working on the right flank in the Olympic Stadium, and Magath will meet again every day. The coach wants to introduce himself to his new team in the morning, followed by the first training session. Slovakia international Pekarik is the only one in the Berlin squad who has worked with the well-travelled coach, which also makes him a source of information for younger colleagues. “I think that one or the other player has already asked him how nice things are going to be over the next few days,” said Magath happily.
How good things are at Hertha BSC in the coming days and weeks will largely depend on whether Magath manages to keep the club in the Bundesliga. “Nothing else counts,” says Hertha’s sporting director Fredi Bobic. The current situation requires “that we have to reset everything again,” said Bobic. Hertha is still without a win this calendar year and has slipped to the penultimate place in the table. The recent series of defeats led to the separation from Tayfun Korkut on Sunday. Korkut, for its part, had only taken over the team from Pal Dardai in November, at that time Hertha was not yet in a relegation zone.
Magath like Rehagel once?
Korkut failed to make the progress Bobic wanted, instead Hertha slipped deeper and deeper into the fight against relegation under his leadership. In addition to all the defeats in the Bundesliga, the loss of the cup against the currently much more successful city rivals Union in their own stadium hurt. In the end, Bobic was no longer able to hold on to the Korkut he had brought with him. Magath is the third coach this season to follow him.
Some observers felt reminded of the return campaign with Otto Rehhagel ten years ago when Magath’s commitment was announced. Hertha also brought him out of retirement. Rehhagel was supposed to save the Berliners from relegation, which didn’t work. Hertha lost in the relegation against Fortuna Düsseldorf and got relegated.
His commitment was “no knee-jerk reaction”: Fredi Bobic (right) on Felix Magath
:
Image: dpa
It shouldn’t get that far with Magath. The now 68-year-old football teacher last coached a club in the Bundesliga when Rehhagel was relegated with Hertha. After that he worked in England and China before he withdrew from day-to-day business and only carried out consulting activities. Hardly anyone in and around Berlin had reckoned with Magath. Not without pride, Bobic explained his commitment, which had expired without any media background noise: “For me, he was never away from the window. I’ve been toying with the idea for a while.”
Magath bring exactly the attributes that are now required. “Experience, discipline and a hard hand when dealing with the players,” said Bobic, who had hardly missed an opportunity in the past few days to blame the predicament to a large extent on the football-playing staff. That staff that he had found fit in late summer to spend a quiet season. Nothing came of it, so now the return of the storm-tested Magath. “In the Bundesliga, I’ve managed to get out of a situation like this six or seven times with my team. That’s why I see this task as something that is tailored to me,” said Magath.
