It was Hertha’s first draw of the season. But goalscorer Stevan Jovetic was a winner in the 1-1 draw against Bayer Leverkusen. And Krzysztof Piatek, whom he ousted, got a striking entry in his “homework book” the following day
Some goals are nothing but goals – and some goals are little works of art. Just the previous week, Pal Dardai had stated quite bluntly and very accurately that the current crop did not have the individual class of earlier Hertha teams on the offensive. On Sunday afternoon, it seemed as if Stevan Jovetic wanted to prove his superior wrong.
The Montenegrin took a header resolutely delivered into the sixteen by Maximilian Mittelstädt with his right foot and finished with his left in a fluid movement. It was the perfect symbiosis of speed of action and technical excellence that Hertha’s newcomer performed three minutes before the half-time break. The Süddeutsche Zeitung called the attacker’s stroke of genius “Oscar-worthy”, and the coach praised it the day after: “That was an exceptional moment. Sometimes this moment is missing in our game. This time it was there.”
This fine-footed swashbuckler, who has now left his mark and scored in all five of Europe’s major leagues, provided evidence of his extraordinary talent soon after his arrival in Berlin at the end of July. In the pre-season test match against Liverpool FC (4:3) in Innsbruck, half an hour of service was enough for him to score a brace on his debut in a Hertha jersey, in his Bundesliga debut in mid-August in Cologne (1:3) he scored after six minutes, and in the second round of the Cup in Münster (3:1) he scored in the third minute.
In the current World Cup qualifying campaign, he is on three goals after four appearances, with the Hertha pro captaining Montenegro against the Netherlands on Saturday and Turkey on Tuesday. The story of his first three-and-a-half months at his new club also includes the fact that Jovetic, who is considered chronically injury-prone, was out for a month with a persistent calf blister he suffered in the 5-0 defeat in Munich at the end of August.
He has since returned to full fitness and the Leverkusen side felt the effects. Afterwards, Jovetic wrote “a really good game against a very strong team” into his team’s balance sheet, and he himself could even have added to his personal tally in the second half after a fine pass from Niklas Stark. But instead of receiving the ball, the 32-year-old with the glittering vita (AC Florence, ManCity, Inter Milan, FC Sevilla, AS Monaco) took it directly – and missed by a wide margin.
Clear words towards Piatek
Krzysztof Piatek, a completely different type to Jovetic and previously set as a nine, had to make way – and put up with clear words from his coach on Monday. “I wasn’t happy with the striker position lately,” Dardai told a media roundtable. “In my head it was: I need someone who takes free kicks, has technique, sets himself apart and doesn’t just wait for the balls to come. On Friday night it was clear to me, I’ll throw Jove in there. I need players up front who can hold the ball and not just wait for the moment to score. Krzysztof is waiting for the pass into the sixteen. I need more action up front.”
So the tricky, sly combination player Jovetic, who likes to drop a bit and meet the balls, came on. And Piatek, whose natural territory is the opposition penalty area, remained on the bench for 90 minutes – even when Jovetic vacated his place after 73 gruelling minutes on soggy turf against Bayer 04’s centre-back giants.
Davie Selke came on, which made sense with the score at 1-0 and the spaces available – and Piatek watched from the outside until the end and now knows what the coach wants from him: more participation in his team’s play and more physicality in securing and holding balls. These are exactly the starting points that Dardai’s predecessor Bruno Labbadia had already identified and criticised in Piatek.
