It couldn’t have been much more bitter. It was only in injury time that Bochum’s Keven Schlotterbeck fired a shot at Hertha heading for relegation. After an intense and entertaining match against VfL Bochum, this season ended abruptly and sadly with relegation. As is often the case, the Berliners could not reward themselves for their performance.
Berliners should have plenty of reasons to cry these days. The seventh relegation in the club’s history is too painful and the funding and licensing situation for the next season is too uncertain. With the home game against VfL Bochum, the Berliners also set a record. And contrary to expectations, this is not a negative balance sheet.
According to ‘taz’, the Berliners managed to achieve the highest attendance average in the club’s history in their Olympic stadium. According to ‘Kicker’, a total of 911,887 spectators watched the Hertha games in Germany’s Oberhaus, despite the Berliners’ sometimes moderate to poor performance. Think, for example, of the 0:5 home loss to VfL Wolfsburg.
With numerous ticket and discount campaigns, the club’s management has succeeded in attracting Berliners to the Charlottenburg stadium this season. Without fan support, Hertha would likely be in an even worse position. The Berliners got 21 of a meager 26 points at home. If it were up to the home table in the Bundesliga, Hertha would still have a chance to stay in the league. But the truth also only includes five points on foreign soil.
The average attendance this season in Berlin broke a record compared to 2011/12. Some parallels can certainly be drawn here. After all, the Berliners failed spectacularly with an experienced face on the bench.
The team around Otto Rehhagel lost relegation to Fortuna Dusseldorf and had to move to the second division.
