Enlarge image
New Hertha coach Tayfun Korkut: Of all people, he should now take over a team that is very far behind its own excessive demands?
Photo:
Jan-Philipp Burmann / dpa
At the end of this day, which was astonishing even for Hertha-BSC standards, Tayfun Korkut said two sentences that make the endeavor with him as the new head coach no longer seem so strange.
It was no longer as if someone had hacked the Berlin Bundesliga club's Twitter account when it was announced shortly after 10 a.m. on Monday morning that coach Pál Dárdai had been dismissed and that Korkut would be his successor until the end of the season.
When asked about his concept of leading the team looking for their identity away from 14th place in the table, Korkut said: “You have to become a bit of a chameleon as a coach.
You have to see what the team needs, adapt to them and then give them support. "
These are pretty quiet sounds for a club that is best known for loud announcements.
Since the entrepreneur Lars Windhorst invested 374 million euros, Hertha has been trying desperately to outgrow its own pity and become a big club.
With Korkut, however, Hertha's sports director Fredi Bobic has now opted for a very small solution.
Korkut had been unemployed for more than three years.
At his previous positions in Hanover, Kaiserslautern, Leverkusen and Stuttgart, the 47-year-old never had lasting success.
He never stayed longer than 22 games at the last three clubs.
So he of all people should now take over a team that is very far behind its own excessive demands?
Have you finally gone mad at Hertha?
Fredi Bobic is a level-headed man. When asked on Monday why he broke up with Dárdai now, two days after a 1-1 draw against Augsburg, in which his team was still leading until the 97th minute, Bobic said: “A win or a loss weren't crucial here. If we had won 1-0, the decision would have been the same. «There are times when you have to act. "It had come now."
The 50-year-old has been dealing with the name Korkut for weeks.
Both know each other from their shared days in Stuttgart, when Korkut became a U19 coach in 2011 and Bobic was sports director at VfB.
What seems like an act of desperation is, on closer inspection, a decision that is a little better considered.
How good she is remains to be seen.
But the fact that Korkut is now with Hertha and that this change in the coaching position has been looming for a long time is not a good testimony for the outgoing Pál Dárdai.
There was no serious conflict between coach and head of sport, as it was called in the meantime.
Not even when Dárdai publicly complained about his standing in the club after a 5-0 defeat in Munich and was then criticized by Bobic for it.
But Bobic had doubts about the Berlin record player Dárdai from the first day he took over the business at Hertha in the summer.
Before the new season, SPIEGEL learned, a bigger solution should actually be found.
Because the candidate was not available, Dárdai was allowed to continue.
He took over Hertha for the second time at the end of January and managed to keep the team, which had fallen apart and later even in quarantine.
The club owed him a lot.
End of muddling through
But when Hertha presented itself in the new season as a club of many faces, when there was a constant change between good performances like the win against Gladbach and then again terrifying games like the 0-2 in the city derby against Union Berlin, Bobic increased more and more Conviction that a fresh start is needed.
Bobic said he has gained insight over the past few weeks.
"When you have conversations, you know: Okay, there's more to come, or nothing more, or you muddle your way through."
Bobic no longer wanted to muddle through.
"I didn't feel like many things had gotten better," he said.
In 13 games of the season so far, Hertha has only scored 13 goals.
This was of course also due to the departures Matheus Cunha, Doki Lukebakio and Jhon Córdoba in the summer - three of the most dangerous attackers.
But you never knew what you would get from Hertha.
In addition, the team has the second worst defense in the league (27 goals against).
It is now only one point before the relegation place.
"We just couldn't see any further development of the team," the club management said about Dárdai.
With Korkut, there is now a trainer who, from Bobic's point of view, has one particular core characteristic: "His great strength is that he can adapt to what he has found." A trainer chameleon.
He had success with it in Stuttgart in 2018.
At that time, Korkut also took over VfB in 14th place, but then made it the second best team in the second half of the season and narrowly missed qualifying for the Europa League.
But after seven games in the new season and one elimination in the cup, he had to leave.
Things went worse at Bayer Leverkusen.
In March 2017, Korkut took over the team, but only got two wins out of eleven games.
In the end, Bayer was even more disastrous in twelfth place than before Korkut.
Friends with ex-national coach Löw
Since the end in Stuttgart, Korkut has mainly looked after his three children, watched games and maintained contacts, including with Bobic and the former national coach Joachim Löw.
Both have a friendship and both have the same advisor.
Löw would have been on the market too, but Hertha wasn't thinking about it, so you can hear.
A big solution like Löw to realize all the dreams of the European Cup, Korkut should not be at Hertha.
Bobic is aware that Berliners are still far too far removed from this goal.
With Korkut, however, he wants to take at least a small step forward.
"It's about getting the most out of what we have," said the sports director.
Of course, Bobic himself bears the greatest risk. After his successful time in Frankfurt, he has so far enjoyed an impeccable reputation in the industry and also at Hertha.
But if things go wrong with Korkut, Bobic is badly damaged.