The night before the game against FC Nürnberg we had a little bit of a shock. It appears unnamed individuals from Hertha informed the umbrella organisation for the Ostkurve (Förderkreis-Ostkurve) that they were going to change the format of the pre-kickoff build up. Instead of finishing with everyone singing the traditional “Nur nach Hause” before the kick off they would blast out a track by Seeed over the PA system. It would appear that there was no consultation with the fan groups about this. The change was just passed on to members as one small paragraph in the new season e-mail the night before the first game and, over the phone to the Ultra groups.
On the day and well before the kick off, Frank Zander came in front of the Ostkurve and led the singing of the traditional Hertha song “Nur nach Hause”. This was all very fine and dandy with the fans enthusiastically singing along. All was as it should be. Then before kick off the PA system kicked in blasting out “Dickes B” by Seeed. Needless to say the fans carried on singing their anthem – “Nur nach Hause” and, in my opinion at least, it all sounded pretty awful. I hate the PA system at the best of times but when it’s trying to drown out our own fans?
Sure “Dickes B” is about Berlin but you can’t just dump that on a few tens of thousand football fans without any notice (let alone consultation) and expect them to like it. That, was never going to happen. I can’t say “Nur nach Hause” is exactly my all time favourite as a song but hey, like it or not, it is the Hertha anthem and, to be fair it is pretty easy to sing along to. If they wanted to play the Speed track fine, just finish off with the traditional anthem.
On the face of it this appears a strange way to run a club. It felt like the powers that be feel the need to do something really stupid to really annoy the fans every year. When the club is trying all sorts of things to fill seats in the Olympiastadion antagonising it’s existing fanbase in this way only serves to shoot themselves in the foot with a giant blunderbuss. So far we have only heard one side of the story of course but the heavy handed way in which it appeared to have been done has only made it worse.
I really don’t understand what’s got into their tiny little brains – absolutely crazy in my opinion.
