A touch of PSG: what perhaps the biggest surprise in German football has to do with a doner ritual
Rather than being promotion favourites number one, Hertha BSC were the great unknown before the season. Are the Berliners now reaching their goal of all things after the departures of numerous stars? Or perhaps precisely because of them?
The comparison is a blunt one and it does not fit in every detail. Still, at its core it feels apt: Hertha BSC are giving off a touch of Paris Saint-Germain these days.
PSG spent years chasing the club's first Champions League title. Highly paid superstars such as Neymar, Kylian Mbappe and Lionel Messi were supposed to carry the Parisians to the one place they so desperately wanted to reach, but they kept falling short. Then, in the first year when none of those three all-dominant stars was still there, they suddenly won the big one. And in the season after that, they even did it a second time straight away.
Hertha's resoundingly failed staging of themselves as a "big city club", one that wanted to become a permanent fixture in European competition if possible, was only a few years ago. Those grand ambitions never made it off the page and were buried for good with relegation in 2023 at the latest. After that, Hertha had to cut their coat according to their cloth, yet in the world of the second division they still carried a certain glamour, at least when it came to the big names brought in to lead the traditional club from the capital back to where, in their own eyes, they belong: the Bundesliga. Fabian Reese, Michael Cuisance, Diego Demme and Michal Karbownik were the names. Yet the promotion push has come to nothing in each of the past three years.
Why did Hertha BSC sell Fabian Reese and co.?
Could that change now, of all times, with the top stars and top earners largely gone? Unlike PSG, Hertha have simply had financial reasons for the prominent bloodletting. The cash-strapped Berliners need money to gradually chip away at their mountain of debt, so they were forced to sell their best-known players. They brought in fees totalling 16.5 million euros for Reese (to VfL Wolfsburg), goalkeeper Tjark Ernst (to Feyenoord Rotterdam) and Cuisance (to RC Lens). On top of that, their high salaries are off the books as well, as are those of Karbownik (to Basaksehir on a free transfer) and Demme (retirement).
Hertha also sold home-grown assets such as super talent Kennet Eichhorn (to Bayer Leverkusen) and attacking player Marten Winkler (to RSC Anderlecht), taking their summer transfer income to almost 30 million euros. Against that backdrop, many wondered how the Old Lady, still being tipped as the number one promotion favourites a year earlier, could possibly absorb such a huge loss of quality on the pitch.
Was a difficult season, with the risk of a collapse, on the way? Especially as, two weeks before the start of the season, not a single new signing had arrived to offset the many high-profile departures. At that point, the Berliners were the only one of Germany's 36 first- and second-division clubs yet to sign a new player. "We have to believe that the strategy will work. This club deserves us doing it seriously and solidly," managing director Dr Peter Görlich said as he asked for patience.
Now, roughly two and a half months later, Hertha have turned the summer's question marks into giant exclamation marks, at least for the time being. The capital club are the only second-division side still without dropping a point, top the 2. Bundesliga with six wins from their first six matches, and already have a small cushion of seven points over relegated Wolfsburg in fourth place. That "mini-PSG effect" has arrived, at least for now.
What defines Hertha BSC's new style of play
"We have implemented a new way of how we want to play," said coach Stefan Leitl, whose revamped approach has become a cornerstone of this dream start after the club stuck with him despite a disappointing previous season. The hallmarks of the new Hertha football are clear: high intensity, man-to-man all over the pitch, higher and more aggressive pressing, and a direct drive towards goal after winning the ball back. In short, the Berliners' game has become bolder and cheekier, less stodgy than in the recent past.
"We play intensely and also perform well football-wise. We are brave, we are dominant," Leitl told Bild, stressing that the altered approach was "better tailored to the squad available". Fittingly, centre-back Niklas Kolbe, who has formed a first-class partnership in the heart of defence with academy product Linus Gechter, recently said on Hertha's website: "The style of play suits me very well because a lot of what I do comes through pace. When you have an open one-on-one almost across the entire pitch - at times I am at the opposition penalty area, but within seconds I have to be back at ours - then there are a lot of running duels. And I do not feel uncomfortable in those, quite the opposite. I definitely see my strengths in defending deep balls."
Meanwhile, the few additions Hertha were still able to make have already largely proved sensible reinforcements. Above all Oluwaseun Adewumi, the only one of the four new arrivals who could still be signed before matchday one. The 21-year-old Austrian, on loan from Burnley FC, has already scored three goals in his six league appearances so far and is causing plenty of problems in attack.
New signing Pedersen raves about Hertha's new football: "I love that"
Mads Pedersen, who arrived as a 150,000-euro bargain from Augsburg FC and is the only new signing for whom a fee was paid, has been an outright hit on the left side of the back four without any settling-in time at all, already providing two assists. "It is madness what is going on here. We play with a lot of risk. I love that. The coach allows me to make a lot of runs forward," an enthusiastic Pedersen raved after the 2-1 win in Dresden immediately before the international break, the sixth win in the sixth second-division game of 2026/27.
Farid Alfa-Ruprecht, on loan from Bayer Leverkusen, has at least already shown his qualities as a substitute, scoring the relieving third goal shortly before the end in the 3-1 win in Osnabrück. Only centre-forward Gustaf Nilsson, on loan from Club Brugge, has so far been unable to make his mark and still needs a little time to settle in.
Hertha can also lean on one or two internal breakout performers who have suddenly become far more important. Midfielder Kevin Sessa and attacking player Jon Dagur Thorsteinsson, for example, embody the phenomenon of previously almost written-off players suddenly taking on a completely different role when the departures of established names create the space for them to do so.
While Sessa was mostly a bit-part player last season and Thorsteinsson was loaned to Brann Bergen in Norway in the first half of 2026 because he was barely getting any game time by the end, the duo are now firmly established and each is playing a major part in the outstanding start to the season. "Our Icelandic Messi," Pedersen joked appreciatively about Thorsteinsson after he had sparked the turnaround in Dresden with two fine long-range goals.
Academy products keep the Hertha DNA alive
One positive side effect of the enforced cost-cutting is that Hertha are consistently continuing along the path they set out some time ago by giving more opportunities in the first team to Berlin lads from their own academy. Soufian Gouram, a 20-year-old who joined Hertha at 13, is playing regularly, while 19-year-old Boris Mamuzah Lum is also knocking on the door, as are 20-year-old Selim Telib and 17-year-old Jerome Diallo. With Gechter and Julian Eitschberger, two academy products are regular starters, while Pascal Klemens and Marton Dardai are two more who play important roles in the squad. They represent the Hertha DNA and provide identification and authenticity.
"I get the feeling that everyone has understood what it is about," Leitl says. The team, which lost so much quality in the summer, have found themselves all over again, and the togetherness looks right. One culinary ritual that has taken hold in this still young season points that way too: after all four league away wins so far, the squad have gone together for a doner kebab in Berlin-Charlottenburg, sometimes celebrating the three points until late into the night. "I had never tried a Berlin doner before, it tastes brutally good. We new lads immediately have the feeling that we are all one family. The team are outstanding," new signing Pedersen said enthusiastically.
That spirit has also shown itself in the way Hertha have handled difficult moments on the pitch. In the 5-3 win in Braunschweig, they came back from 2-0 down, and they also turned it around in Dresden after falling 1-0 behind. The Berliners then saw out the 2-1 win against Magdeburg despite midfielder-in-chief Paul Seguin being sent off for a second yellow after just over an hour.
Full of self-belief after taking the maximum haul, Hertha now have to back up their dream start over the coming weeks and months if they are to become a top-flight side again in 2027. There is perhaps an extra source of motivation too: while Union have long since replaced Hertha as the number one side in the capital, a revival in that respect suddenly looks possible as well. Because, as is well known, opposite Hertha's thrilling start to the season stands a horror start for the Iron Ones one division higher, with Union second from bottom on one point from four games. And so the newly formed Hertha could also be on course to return as the top force in Berlin.
