From Ultra to President in Berlin
Maybe all is not lost and football can still belong to the fans?
Planned for more content over the summer but a much-needed break but the new season is just around the corner and I will be ramping things up again.
Before we get into stuff on the pitch or in the transfer market, there was a pretty groundbreaking election in German football over the weekend. The new president of Hertha BSC is … a former ultra?
German football provides the biggest and most obvious battleground for the ongoing war between the sport’s traditions and those who wish to upend them.
Tradition versus modernity in Germany can essentially bee boiled down to clubs who are organically funded, where supporters have a say, and clubs where those things are not so important.
Against Modern Football. Football Without Fans Is Nothing. The list goes on and the referendums (that is the plural of referendum, even if it sounds like it shouldn’t be) never end. The Super League, a World Cup in Qatar. Countless battles to keep football in the hands of the fans have been lost.
Perhaps the war has too: the land of 50+1 watched on as RB Leipzig won their first ever major trophy just last month. But sometimes something happens to suggest the fight is going on, that it must, and will, continue to go on. And Hertha fans delivered such a moment at the weekend as they elected Kay Bernstein, a former Ultra, as the club’s new president.
The irony of it all is that it is the grumbling of a big investor, the sort German football’s traditionalists oppose, that brought this change about. Lars Windhorst has pumped €374m into the club since buying a stake in 2019. With 50+1 in place he cannot take control of the entire club but it was a power struggle between him and former president Werner Gegenbauer that saw the latter resign in May. Windhorst was also the reason Bernstein ran for the open position.
“The process started, mentally, the say I saw Mr Windhorst’s interview on ‘Bild TV’ and I just put my hands on my head.”
Now he’s the man Windhorst has to deal with.
“We go in open-minded and without any reservations into talks. It can only be better than it was before,” the entrepreneur said.
And those talks will be professional — Bernstein is a lot more than just an ultra. Firstly, he was a co-founder of his ultra group and the man who stood at the front with a megaphone. But he has sat in the stands for a decade now. He leads a marketing agency and will, presumably, know that he has to manage in both directions. Bernstein may have been selected as an anti-establishment candidate and will surely have the fans at the forefront of his plans but nothing will work if he cannot get along with Windhorst and with sporting director Fredi Bobic.
“If I can do anything, it’s project management,” he said on Sunday. “I can lead good people and I can do one thing especially well: set the example when it comes to passion for Hertha.”
The fans are now represented at boardroom level but competence must follow because there will be a queue of nay-sayers waiting to tear him down.
For many in German football, Ultras are a problem. They are loud, they are opinionated, and they don’t back down. These are all good things. Ultras are the biggest reason that hooliganism is less prevalent that it was, they consistently raise money for noble causes, and they are why standing sections across Germany are largely welcoming environments, free from racism and homophobia.
They are not painted that way by their critics. By those who sit at every game for free, are well fed at every stadium in the land, and spend their weeks walking the corridors of power.
And fixing Hertha will not be easy. They’re a mess. The club haven’t recorded a positive goal difference in Germany’s top flight since 2009, finishing in the top half just twice in that time. In 2021/22 they narrowly avoided relegation with a play-off win over Hamburg.
There are big challenges ahead but there are also signs that football is changing. As Stephan Uersfeld of n-tv notes, former ultra and fan-activist Jan-Henrik Gruszecki now works for Borussia Dortmund, where “his word carries weight” and he was recently seen watching the U-19 Bundesliga final, against Hertha, alongside CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke and new head coach Edin Terzić.
Maybe this is the evolution of the Ultra scene in Germany, the next step, where fans don’t just have declare that the club is theirs but have the means to make changes from the inside.
Windhorst’s high aims, his mission to turn Hertha into a Big City Club, were met by derision when he laid them out and even more as they slipped further and further away from anything that could resemble success. For outsiders, the club has been cold, unlikable. For insiders, there hasn’t been much to shout about. That could all change now.
Bernstein’s campaign was run with a harsh analysis of the club’s financial and sporting record alongside criticism of how they are seen from the outside. He promises there will be no betting companies as sponsors, that they will focus on youth, and that fans will be appreciated. If he pulls it off, Hertha could become interesting in a good way.
“Our Old Lady is in intensive care,” he told his fellow fans after his win, a win he earned because he was one of them.
“Now we can heal her, make her healthy.”
Maybe they can. And maybe, if they do, they will pave the way for more fans to take back control of their own clubs. Football’s biggest war does not have to be over yet.