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The future belongs to Berlin, but not to Michael Preetz anymore
Photo:
ANNEGRET HILSE / REUTERS
Hertha BSC's record scorer is still Michael Preetz.
He scored 93 league goals for Berlin, and in 1999 he was the top scorer in the Bundesliga.
Perhaps that should be remembered again that day.
To remember the good times the club also associates with Preetz.
However, Preetz has not been a Hertha player for 18 years, but a Hertha official, first as an assistant to the management under the extensive Dieter Hoeneß, then from 2009 as a self-responsible.
And if this era - and you can call it that way, given the time period - passes on this Sunday, then you can, then you have to say: With all the merits - it was by and large a time that did not bring the club any further.
What was not only due to the 53-year-old should also be included in such a balance sheet.
Hertha is a strange, exhausting club per se, constantly meandering between the demands.
The fact that it is based in the capital didn't make work any easier.
This is linked to expectations that Hertha was seldom up to.
Preetz could have become a respected provincial prince elsewhere, here he was constantly under the magnifying glass.
He had nothing to do with Big City Club
Big City Club - this fatal blingbling motto by which Hertha is measured and which has to be used as a keyword for any quick mockery when it doesn't work - this motto did not come from Preetz.
It was grafted onto him and the association by investor Lars Windhorst and his ambassador Jürgen Klinsmann.
And it formulates the anti-Preetz program, so to speak.
Preetz was never someone in thick pants.
Instead, he liked to put the Hertha light under a bushel, screwed down the goals, so much that even patient Hertha fans shook their heads at the low demands of their athletic leadership.
At the latest when Windhorst got the say in the club, at the very latest when he put the former Sky boss Carsten Schmidt in front of Preetz's nose, he was no longer the right person.
He had been a thorn in the side of Windhorst for a long time, actually it is astonishing and above all due to the protective hand of President Gegenbauer that Preetz was able to keep himself under the new circumstances for so long.
With his defensive demeanor, his "tortured voice", which the "Tagesspiegel" complained, no longer fit into the supporting program of this club.
In this respect too, his departure was long overdue.
Michael Peetz as a Hertha striker, blessed times
Photo: Martin-Rose / BONGARTS
Preetz could manage shortages, that was his thing, he was, so to speak, an expert on mediocrity.
But at some point at Hertha nobody wanted mediocrity any more.
The fact that Arne Friedrich will initially take over the tasks of Preetz, the Friedrich Klinsmann brought on board last year under the legendary job description of Performance Manager, shows the paradigm shift in club management.
With Friedrich Preetz had got the man by his side whom he actually wanted to prevent.
Over the years, the managing director has claimed sporting competence for himself, and for himself.
In this regard, he was a kind of revenant of Dieter Hoeneß, who also liked to get involved in sporting matters.
Unhappy with the selection of personnel
For this reason, too, this should not be a Preetz excuse text, the managing director has so often missed in his long term of office, especially when it comes to personnel selection, that after the last chance and the very last chance there was now no very last chance for him.
Shortly after taking office, he dismissed coach Lucien Favre, and in response, the team was relegated from bottom of the table.
After the return to promotion, the horror season 2011/12 followed, when Preetz made two panic commitments with Michael Skibbe and the retiree Otto Rehhagel after the dismissal of coach Markus Babbel, which consequently resulted in the next relegation.
Even then, Preetz was on the brink, he held out for nine more years.
Otto Rehhagel and Michael Preetz 2012
Photo: Frank Leonhardt / dpa
After the situation under coach Pál Dárdai had calmed down, Preetz then made what was perhaps the worst mistake of his managerial career.
In order to bring movement into the sporting perspective, the club separated from Dárdai, which was so popular in the Hertha milieu, without real need and entrusted the team to the inexperienced Ante Covic.
A young, fresh coach, that's what Preetz had thought, when the young Kohfeldts and Nagelsmanns were also becoming popular types in the league.
With the blemish that Covic was not a nail man and the investor Windhorst did not provide a development trainer with his money with whom one had to be patient.
Labbadia didn't do the job
So with Jürgen Klinsmann the rudder was then completely thrown around, a course reversal of 180 degrees, and already then you had the feeling that Preetz was no longer in control.
Bruno Labbadia's commitment, the Corona break in spring, that eased the situation for a short time.
But the task of the club to build a homogeneous team from the numerous additions from the short time of Klinsmann that can play at the top was not fulfilled by the veteran Labbadia.
Since this week at the latest, no one trusted him anymore that it would be anything.
0: 3 against Hoffenheim, 1: 4 against Werder, within three days, both at home in the Olympic Stadium, no coach can survive that.
This squad is expensive, but in large parts it looks completely uneven, as if nobody had seriously thought about how the players could fit into the team structure when investing.
It's a group of gifted individual players, nothing more.
For the Pole Krzystof Piatek, Hertha transferred 23 million euros to AC Milan, the attacker has been a usable joker at best since then.
Hertha has spent a lot of money since Windhorst was there: 77 million euros in autumn and winter with Klinsmann's blessing, it is often pointed out that there is no other club in the world that has invested so much in new players during this time.
The blooming dreams that arose with the entry of Windhorst's Tennor group, however, have not matured.
The big shopping tour that was expected for the summer did not materialize - also because the Windhorst money flowed more hesitantly than some in the club had hoped.
Now Hertha, it is said, wants to bring Dárdai back as head coach until the end of the season, a signal of how serious the club is.
The lofty plans have been shelved for the time being, now it's about putting the team on a solid footing and maintaining the class, nothing else.
The paradox: It would actually be a situation made for the manager Michael Preetz.
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