There were quite a few experts who believed that the “Old Lady” from the capital was on the irreversible path to a retirement home. The bloodletting was too great for Hertha BSC to be even remotely confident of a worry-free future. The best players had left in the summer, leaving behind some talented players and players from the second row.
In this respect, what has happened in Berlin so far can be described as a small football miracle. Before the fifth matchday, the club not only leads the table in the second division with twelve points, it has also progressed in the cup - where there has often been an embarrassing exit in the first round.
The sporting record to date has been flawless and is already worth an entry in the history books: In 59 years of professional football, Hertha has never won the first four league games, and for the first time since May 2013, the club is leading the table in the lower house of German football. At the time, promotion was successful under coach Jos Luhukay - and after the sensational start, quite a few in the long-suffering Berlin fan camp are hoping for a similar success story next year.
Departures worth 29.5 million euros
What is particularly impressive is the fact that no one else in the second division has had to accept such a loss of value in their squad as the “Old Lady”. All stars left the club during the recent transfer window. The mega-talent Kennet Eichhorn went to Bayer Leverkusen for nine million euros; Captain Fabian Reese joined VfL Wolfsburg for a fee of eight million euros; Goalkeeper Tjark Ernst succumbed to the temptations of Feyenoord Rotterdam (five million) and right winger Marten Winkler to those of Anderlecht (four million). In addition, the chronically cash-strapped Berlin playmaker had to let Michaël Cuisance move to Lens for compensation of 3.5 million euros.
With the departures, Hertha earned 29.5 million euros, but lost a lot of sporting substance and had to cope with the loss of 56 scorer points from last season. Normally this is difficult to compensate for. The Berliners involuntarily documented how financially ailing they still are in their spending spree: only the left-back Mads Pedersen, who was signed from Augsburg, cost the club a transfer fee - 150,000 euros. In the entire second league, only promoted team Energie Cottbus spent less on new staff than Berlin.
Instead of investing large sums of money in the squad, the club management around managing director Peter Görlich and coach Stefan Leitl implemented a new philosophy: no more big names, but a high degree of personal responsibility for the professionals remaining in the small squad and unity within the kicking team.
"The team has a clear plan and a lot of courage," explained Görlich in the "Kicker": "We have increased the personal responsibility for each player through the leaner squad, which creates psychological security. Everyone notices that they are needed - and still feels that they cannot leave anything out because otherwise someone else will come in. Our team structure has been rearranged. Players have found space that they didn't have before."
An academy that is unparalleled in Germany
To put it more drastically, one could also say that previous followers have now slipped into the role of the protagonists on the pitch: Kevin Sessa, for example, is playing really well in his third year at Hertha. The same applies to Paul Seguin and Sebastian Grönning, who both joined the current championship leader in 2025.
There are also talents from the academy, which is unrivaled in Germany and reliably produces players like Eichhorn and Ibrahim Maza. Maza moved to Leverkusen a year before Eichhorn – transfer fee: twelve million euros. The newest representative of the highly gifted group is Soufian Gouram. The 20-year-old has taken over the orphaned playmaker role from Cuisance and started all five competitive games of the season.
Nowhere else is the permeability from the talent factory into men's football as high as with the Berliners. Defense chief Linus Gechter (22) and right-back Julian Eitschberger (22) learned their trade in the Berlin U-teams, as did goalkeeper Marius Gersbeck (31) before them.
A new way of playing has been implemented, said coach Leitl. "We have a smaller squad. Everyone knows how important they are. I think the boys are doing a fantastic job so far. We play intensively and also perform well in terms of football. We are courageous, we are dominant. Now it's important to keep adding a few percent to get through the season well. The boys have maximum trust in me."
It will be interesting to see where this path ends and how the team will defy adversity as the season progresses. On Sunday (1.30 p.m., Sky and in the WELT live ticker) she has to survive against newly promoted VfL Osnabrück - again with a certain amount of humility, which has long since replaced the big city club noise from the resoundingly failed investor Lars Windhorst. Realism instead of megalomania. Hertha is now poor, but ambitious and good.
