EIt was just a small sentence that Fredi Bobic dropped during his explanations and analyzes after the next Hertha BSC defeat, but if you listened a little more closely, a deep helplessness became visible behind the words of the sports manager. “We’d love to swap a few other things,” said the sporting director when asked if coach Tayfun Korkut would be fired after the 2-0 defeat at Borussia Mönchengladbach, who are directly relegated to the relegation zone.
He probably meant parts of the poorly assembled squad, for whose unstable statics Bobic himself is more responsible than Korkut. And maybe Bobic would also like to get rid of the club’s economic environment. The investor Lars Windhorst and his people have already invested more than 370 million euros in the club, but they are also causing permanent unrest in this phase of the season, which is so important for the near future. But because the team and investor cannot be exchanged so quickly, it hit Korkut on Sunday morning.
After only two points in the second half of the season and slipping down to seventeenth place in the table, “the decision was made to make another change in the coaching position,” said Bobic. Korkut’s end is also a bitter defeat for the head of sports. It was he who surprisingly presented the coach as the successor to Pal Dardai in November.
The experiment with Korkut, who had been unemployed for a long time, only worked for a short time. A promising start with seven points from four games was followed by the sporting crash. Korkut only picked up nine points from 13 games with the team. No coach at Hertha BSC has had a worse point average for three decades. “Unfortunately, for various reasons, we could not keep the good start of our work,” Korkut was quoted as saying in a statement by the association.
Funkel is considered a favorite
Despite the bad record, Korkut was certainly not the main problem of this club, which was increasingly threatened with relegation. Since the investor Lars Windhorst got on board in the summer of 2019, Korkut is already the sixth coach who unsuccessfully tried his hand at the club and team. His successor now has to save at short notice, which can hardly be saved in view of the patchy squad and strategic mistakes in recent years.
Accordingly, Hertha’s decision-makers favor a tried-and-tested firefighter to at least extinguish the short-term fires. According to information from the FAZ, Friedhelm Funkel is the favourite, who had already coached the club in the 2009/10 season, albeit without success at the time. With Funkel as coach, Hertha was relegated to the second division. It didn’t hurt his reputation in the industry. Funkel is considered a stress-resistant savior, last season he managed to keep 1. FC Köln in the Bundesliga in a similarly difficult situation.
However, Funkel has actually already ended his career, for a commitment at Hertha the 68-year-old living in Krefeld would have to move to Berlin – if only for a few weeks. Another coach that the club management is dealing with more intensively is Michael Hartmann, who is currently responsible for the U19s at Hertha. With his team, he is in first place in the North/Northeast Bundesliga season.
