My Fair Lady: Hertha’s Road to Europe

By: Jan | May 19th, 2008

The old lady Hertha is back in Europe. The club topped the national Fair Play Ranking and will compete in next season’t UEFA Cup as a reward. The Bundesliga Offside recaps the three crucial moments in Hertha’s UEFA Cup spot clinching season.

1. Josip Simunic takes anger management classes.
Hertha’s infamous defender, who usually gets anything from three yellow to plenty of red cards, was forced by his employee to take some anger management classes. The results paid of big time. Hertha didn’t receive a single straight red or yellow-red card during the season.

2. Hertha congratulate Bayern and say good bye to Olli and Ottmar.
And by doing so with a big banner, they made sure the people who award Fair Play points for the category “respect for the opponent”, couldn’t possibly miss it.

Servus Olli and Ottmar

3. Hertha bag the remaining Fair Play points in style.
There are additional points to win by “playing positive football”, which they did. Instead of ruining Bayern’s party, they let them play, didn’t get on their nerves, let them score a few goals. That’s a positive approach. Hertha scored more points in the category “respect for the referee”, by making Markus Merk’s last day at work as easy as possible. In return Merk didn’t hand out a single card to Hertha granting the maximum amount of Fair Play points.

As the last impression is the lasting impression, it didn’t matter that Hertha didn’t burn all those Fair Play fireworks in their other games.

Now it’s time for Lulu to end Hertha’s history of being a first round UEFA Cup choker and begin a new chapter as possibly a second round UEFA Cup choker, or even an UEFA Cup group stage choker.