The time stamp on the short message service Twitter says that it was 8:12 p.m. when Hertha BSC thought they had won a battle. “Berlin eats diversely,” the club joked on its account, and also told the world: “Now it’s about the (vegan) sausage!” The word “vegan” was found exactly as it was in the original, i.e. in parenthesis.
And the whole thing secondly, wink – or should we say: wink smiley? -, an allusion was that Union President Dirk Zingler recently sports image had explained that although he “basically had nothing against vegan sausages”, Union would “not fulfill every wish” because football at Union means: “Bratwurst, beer” and “90 minutes of football”.
Beyond all the ideological debates that revolved around the statements, Zingler’s statement was above all this: The variation of the often invoked motto: Union communicates through football. On the other hand, Hertha always wants to be hip and then even hipper if possible: “Our vegan sausage is now available at the food stands in Blocks Q and T as well as in the guest area. Juten appetite!”, Hertha told Zingler at 8:13 p.m countered, which might not have mattered if Hertha’s social media officer hadn’t had to tweet the result of the evening at 10:47 p.m. Hertha 2, Union 3.
Hertha wants to be hip, Union wins the cup game
Union had thus reached the quarter-finals of the DFB Cup. Dreams of maybe adding one more to the statue in front of the An der Alten Försterei stadium – Ralf Quest and Ulrich Prüfkewith the FDGB Cup in 1968. And Hertha? With a four-point lead on a relegation zone, he once again looks into the long-familiar abyss, only vegan-fed now.
The game is basically told quickly. Union should have taken the lead after ten seconds hand-stopped by Max Kruse and not after officially certified eleven minutes by Andreas Voglsammer. Long ball, cross, lunge, lob, goal. The fact that it was 2-0 shortly after the break – long ball, extended header, Öztunali cross, Stark own goal – had an inherent game logic that Hertha was even able to shake briefly with Suat Serdar. More precisely: 87 seconds long.
As soon as Serdar had scored, Union increased – free kick flank, volley acceptance by Robin Knoche, goal – to 3:1. Hertha made it 3-2, but it was just too late: in the fifth minute of stoppage time. In the Olympic Stadium, which was almost empty because of the pandemic and only filled with 3,000 spectators because of the pandemic, I had a question that could only be called rhetorical. Kruse was asked whether Union Berlin was number one, and the 33-year-old answered truthfully: “As of now, yes!”
In fifth place in the Bundesliga, Union is currently the highest-ranked team in the cup competition, ahead of RB Leipzig. Union coach Fischer was asked whether he saw himself as a favourite, and the Swiss responded with a double “Hm” that came through closed lips and a slight smile. But then he made a statement that sounded irrelevant, but was a real challenge for Fischer: “If you play in the cup, you also want to go to the final. Otherwise you don’t have to take part in this competition,” said the Swiss.
This is how the Unioners are: not a filigree symphony orchestra, more of a ska band with a distinctive bass line
Fischer had identified will and passion, and these were basic factors that actually played a very decisive role on Wednesday evening. Union was not the Hungarian miracle team of 1953 against Hertha either, but once again a team that is able to concentrate brilliantly on the basics. The ideological heirs of the Ruhrpott football philosopher Adi Preißler, who turns in his grave faster than any vegan sausage on the grill with certain tweets. “It’s crucial on the pitch,” Preißler once said.
And that’s just how they are, the Unioner: Not a filigree symphony orchestra, more of a ska band with a distinctive bass line, a brass band with a wide range and one or the other off-beat soloist. Above all, however, it is a homogeneous structure that knows how to whitewash with collective power, so that one or the other looks as if he were wearing Dr. Martens boots when kicking the ball. Just like the members of ska bands like The Specials.
When they stepped onto the lawn of the Olympic Stadium, it seemed as if they actually wanted to pogo dance on the freshly laid turf that cost 160,000 euros. But when they scored the opening goal, they proved that they were also masters of other styles: when the opponents had possession, Fischer’s Rudeboys stood tightly entwined like the Greeks in Sirtaki; then again they chased after the balls, which they played behind the Hertha chain with a sense of time, space and rhythm.
Which in turn meant that Hertha looked like they were being pushed off the stage. You could count on one hand the moments when the old lady wanted to dance with you. Nevertheless, the statisticians recorded a overwhelming superiority of the Hertha team: for example in terms of ball possession, the total number of passes (including successful passes), corners and shots on goal.
But the evaluation was nothing more than a new example that one should only believe statistics if one has falsified them oneself. “We deserved to lose,” said coach Tayfun Korkut. “If you look at the first half, especially the first 30 minutes, we weren’t in the game at all.”
There was a lot to talk about, said Korkut, and seemed touched: “Today was a very, very important game for all of us, for the fans, the club, and we lost that today, so we don’t just go into the next day pure.” He was asked whether the processing would be more analytical or emotional, and he said that it would probably be a mixture of both in order to look for recipes “solution-oriented”: “There were things that shouldn’t happen to us.” Not against Union in the cup, and certainly not on Sunday against the leaders FC Bayern, who is anything but vegan, but has not only been decried as a carnivore, but even as a cannibal in the league for years.
