Hertha BSC
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| Full name | Hertha Berliner Sport Club | ||
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| Nickname(s) | Die Alte Dame (the Old Lady) | ||
| Founded | July 25, 1892 | ||
| Ground | Olympic Stadium, Berlin | ||
| Capacity | 74,500 | ||
| Chairman | Dieter Hoeneß | ||
| Manager | Falko Götz | ||
| League | Bundesliga | ||
| 2005-06 | Bundesliga, 6th | ||
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Hertha BSC Berlin is a German football club based in Berlin. The club was formed in 1892 as BFC Hertha 92, taking its name from a steamship with a blue and white smokestack. One of the four young men who founded the club had taken a day trip on this ship with his father.
Hertha performed consistently well on the field, including a win in the first Berlin championship final in 1905. However, their on-field success was not matched financially and in 1920 Hertha merged with the well-heeled club BSC Berlin to form Hertha Berliner Sport Club. The new team continued to enjoy considerable success while also enduring a substantial measure of frustration. They played their way to the German championship final in six consecutive seasons from 1926 to 1931, but were only able to come away with the title in 1930 and 1931.
The team emerged as the Germany's second most successful during the inter-war years. During the Third Reich its performance slipped considerably and did not recover until the late 1950's. Hertha was banned from play against East German teams in the 1949-50 season after taking on a number of players and a coach who had fled Dresden for West Berlin. Throughout the 50's an intense rivalry developed with Tennis Borussia Berlin. A proposal for a merger between the two clubs in 1958 was resoundingly rejected.
At the time of the formation of the Bundesliga in 1963, Hertha was Berlin's reigning champion and so became an inaugural member of the new professional national league. The team was relegated to a lower division after the 1964-65 season following attempts to bribe players to play in the city under what had become decidedly unpleasant circumstances after the erection of the Berlin Wall. This caused something of a crisis for the Bundesliga which wanted for political reasons to continue to have a team in its ranks representing the former capital. Through various machinations this led to the promotion of Tasmania 1900 Berlin, which then delivered the worst-ever performance in Bundesliga history. Hertha managed a return to the premier German league in 1968-69 and developed a solid following making it Berlin's favorite side.
However, Hertha was soon touched by scandal again through its involvement with several other clubs in the Bundesliga match fixing scandal of 1971. In the course of an investigation of Hertha's role, it was also revealed that the club was 6 million DM in debt. Financial disaster was averted through the sale of the team's home ground.
In spite of this, the team continued to enjoy a fair measure of success on the field through the 70's with a second place Bundesliga finish behind Borussia Moenchengladbach in 1974-75, a semi-final appearance in the 1979 UEFA Cup, and two appearances in the final of the German FA Cup (1977 and 1979). The following season saw the fortunes of the team take a turn for the worse as they were relegated to 2.Bundesliga where they would spend thirteen of the next seventeen seasons. Plans in 1982 for a merger with Tennis Borussia, Blau Weiss 90 and SC Charlottenburg to form a side derisively referred to as FC Utopia never came to fruition. Hertha slipped as low as the third tier Amateur Oberliga Berlin where they spent two seasons (1986-87 and 1987-88). Two turns in the Bundesliga (1982-83 and 1990-91) saw the team immediately relegated after poor performances. Financial woes once more burdened the club in 1994 as it found itself 10 million DM in debt. The crisis was again resolved through the sale of real estate holdings and the signing of a new sponsor and management team. By 1997 Hertha found its way back to the Bundesliga where they have generally managed to finish in the upper third of the slate.
Most recently, bright spots for the side have been a continuous string of appearances in international play in the UEFA Cup beginning in the 1999 season and the signing of players such as Sebastian Deisler and Brazilian international Marcelinho, named the Bundesliga's player of the year in May of 2005.
Team trivia
- When Hertha was promoted in 1997, it ended Berlin's ten-year-long drought without a Bundesliga side – Blau-Weiß 90 Berlin had been the last. Germany was probably the only nation in the world whose capital city was not represented in the country's top-flight football league.
2005/06 Squad
Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules; some limited exceptions apply. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
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External links
- Official website
- Abseits Guide to German Soccer
- Herta Berlin statistics
- Herthaunser - Hertha BSC Berlin Official Fanclub
