Hertha Berlin send SOS to Otto Rehhagel

Otto Rehhagel

It is not often these days that one sees emergency aid go from Greece to Germany. But with Otto Rehhagel’s messianic arrival as the new coach of Hertha BSC, it seems that, for once, finance and football are worlds apart. The man who led Greece to glory at Euro 2004, who took newly promoted Kaiserslautern to the title in 1998, is back where he started – trying to keep Hertha in the Bundesliga.

The ever polemical Rehhagel was a member of the 1963 Hertha squad which played – in a triumph of politics over sport – in the first ever Bundesliga season. His return, however, is far from sentimental. Rather it is a direct response to Hertha’s desperate need for results. If there is any German manager who is going to grind out the points needed to save the club from a second relegation in three years, it is probably the divisive and ageing figure of King Otto.

With a career literally as old as the league itself, the 73 year old has taken over from  Jupp Heynckes as the league’s oldest coach. He remains typically adamant, however, that his age is irrelevant: “As long as I live,  I want excitement. I feel healthy and I’m happy that I can take on this challenge. It’s only for three months, and it should be an exciting period”, he declared to the press at the weekend.

If Michael Skibbe came to represent a lack of desire and combative spirit at the Olympiastadion, the Berlin hierarchy will be hoping that Rehhagel’s infamous stubbornness will provide the perfect antidote. The trail of German clubs whose bench seats he has warmed (Hertha is his eight club as a manager) is enough to leave Felix Magath looking like a one club man. The number of enemies he has made along the way, moreover, would make the Wolfsburg manager look like Sir Bobby Charlton. A Sinatraesque determination to do it his own way has seen Rehhagel leave the likes of FC Bayern and Kaiserslautern under a cloud of resentment, and if Michael Preetz and co wish to see him succeed at Hertha, they will have to be ready to make the appropriate concessions.

They will, in fact, have to bite the bullet and negate every value which the Bundesliga has come to hold dear over the last few years. The return to Rehhagelian Ottocracy is a far cry from the progressive, youth focused approach of teams such as Mainz 05 and champions Borussia Dortmund; rather, it is an appeal to a man who encapsulates  like no one else the old cliché of German efficiency.

Rehhagel’s infamous employment of the “Libero”, or sweeper, is for his detractors the perfect illustration of a backward, conservative and thoroughly unattractive tactical philosophy. And yet, it is a philosophy which has historically brought the old man unprecedented success. Kaiserslautern’s title win in 1998, along with Greece’s success in 2004, have become fairytales in themselves, carrying with them the inexhaustible romanticism of the triumphant underdog.

As for the Bundesliga’s promotion of young managerial talent, we should not fool ourselves too much. Yes, the likes of Thomas Tuchel, Marco Kurz and Thorsten Fink are the coaches to whom clubs in trouble are now beginning to turn, but the bottom end of the Bundesliga can hardly be held up as a symbol of putting long term progress ahead of immanent success. Of the nine clubs in the bottom half of the league, only three currently have coaches who have spent more than thirty games in charge. To say that Rehhagel represents a return to an obsession with results is to severely overlook the premature fates of Messrs Babbel, Stanislawski, Streich and co.

The return of a former Bundesliga stalwart who had spent years in a foreign country has also provided yet more ammunition for those likening Hertha’s season to that of Eintracht Frankfurt, who catastrophically hired Christoph Daum twelve months ago. But, while his tactics and track record are relics of a different era, there will be few who can deny that Otto Rehhagel produces results. It is an attitude to football and success which Christoph Biermann, author of “Die Fussball Matrix”, described, rather neatly, thus: “What Rehhagel does is not always fashionable, but it is often surprisingly right.” Avoiding relegation, of course, will never go out of fashion. Whether King Otto will once again be proven right is yet to be seen.

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