After falling to the bottom of the table, Hertha BSC is afraid of relegation. Club icon Pal Dardai should inherit coach Sandro Schwarz and prevent going into the second division.
Pal Dardai does it – who else! Bundesliga soccer club Hertha BSC is apparently using an old reflex to save itself from falling into the 2nd division and entrusts club legend Pal Dardai with the mission of staying up in the league. The 47-year-old Hungarian takes over from Berlin in the remaining six league games and succeeds Sandro Schwarz. The media reported this on Sunday afternoon.
The separation from Schwarz took place two days after the bitter 2: 5 (1: 2) in the basement duel at Schalke 04 and the fall to the bottom of the table. For Dardai, the record player in Berlin, it will be the third rescuer mission on the sidelines of the blue and white. Dardai held the old lady in the Bundesliga in the 2014/15 and 2020/21 seasons.
The last collaboration ended in November 2021. The 2018/19 season under Dardai was the last that Hertha BSC survived without the coach being fired. Dardai is deeply rooted with the club not only because of his merits. His son Marton is also in Hertha’s squad. The 21-year-old was in the starting eleven when Schalke went bankrupt.
Black’s end was becoming apparent. The team hadn’t finished their run on Saturday morning when Schwarz had already left the club grounds in his black SUV.
Hertha BSC: Schwarz foresaw dismissal
After the defeat in Gelsenkirchen on Friday evening, Schwarz had rhetorically prepared for his expulsion. “That’s realistic. I’m responsible,” he said DAZN-Microphone. The fear of the first relegation since 2012 is huge in Berlin.
It was “legitimate and the club’s responsibility to think about it,” Schwarz said. Six games in a row without a win, a frightening system failure of the complete defense in the “final” at the bottom of the table – arguments for continued employment could hardly be found.
Manager Benjamin Weber tried it anyway. “We long for continuity and stability with all the restlessness we have,” said the sports director, but admitted: “The coach is the poorest sow when you see this defensive behavior.”
It will be difficult to stay up, the debacle at Schalke is “a slap in the face, everyone will write us off now”. Weber emphasized that he did not want to have a “personnel discussion here on site”, but announced: “We will discuss it, that’s perfectly clear.” Schwarz seemed to suspect that the separation would result.
Hertha BSC: Dardai has to fix it
Now it’s up to Dardai, who knows a large part of the team and doesn’t need any time to get used to it. It’s about a lot. The crash in the 2nd Bundesliga would set Hertha back a long way. At the same time, it would be the low point of a year-long negative development in which unrest determined day-to-day business, trainers were worn out and money was burned. A trend that, ironically enough, started with the separation from Dardai in the summer of 2019.
Dardai and Hertha BSC still have six games to avert the worst-case scenario. Among other things, the Berliners will receive the two relegation competitors VfB Stuttgart and VfL Bochum. “The team definitely has the quality to stay in the class,” said Schwarz. He himself is no longer allowed to work on it.
