Bundesliga: Hertha Berlin deliver statement win

It's a big year for Berlin. In November, the German capital celebrates the 30th anniversary of the fall of the wall which divided it for 39 years while, from a footballing point of view, the city has not just one Bundesliga representative but two for the first time since 1977.

"The future belongs to Berlin," reads the slogan which has adorned Hertha Berlin's Olympic Stadium for the past couple of years. Indeed, for this season at least, the capital is the only German city with two top-flight football clubs.

Not that the slogan refers to the arrival of local rivals Union Berlin. As far as Hertha are concerned, Berlin's future is blue and white – and the club has big plans to ensure that is the case.

Sunday's emphatic 4-0 win away at Cologne made it two wins from two for the "Old Lady" of German football, an historic tag the club doesn't seem overly keen on hanging on to.

For the second week in a row, 22-year-old Javairo Dilrosun stood out with a stunning individual goal, following up his solo run against Paderborn last week with a dipping long-range effort to give Hertha the lead. At the other end of the scale, 35-year-old Vedad Ibisevic added two more within six minutes of coming off the bench in the second half.

Experience and youth, old and new, past and future; Hertha's goalscorers were very much symbolic of the juncture the club finds itself at as it too looks to the future.

This summer, businessman Lars Windhorst (42) and his company Tennor Holdings purchased 37.5 percent of Hertha Berlin's outsourced professional football department for €125 million ($136.7m). Before the end of the year, the investor is expected to increase his stake to 49.9 percent in exchange for a further €100m. Big numbers, big sums, big plans.

"Hertha can become a real big city club like others in London or Madrid," Windhorst told Spiegel magazine upon acquiring his stake. "Our aim is to turn Hertha into an elite club both in Germany and Europe," he repeated to Bild am Sonntag newspaper this weekend. "People might laugh, but they should not underestimate me as a businessman nor Hertha as a club."

Elite means regular participation in the Champions League – a tough ask for a club which has only ever reached the group stage once (in 1999) and which finished 11th and 10th in the three of the last six Bundesliga seasons.

Sunday's win in Cologne saw Hertha move back up to that familiar mid-table territory, but it did ease the pressure on Ante Covic, the young head coach who was appointed just one month before Windhorst's investment was made public.

Covic, who had led Hertha's U23s to increasingly high finishes in the fourth division, was expected to deliver more expansive football than his predecessor Pal Dardai but consecutive defeats to Wolfsburg, Schalke and Mainz soon had observers wondering whether the club might not have been better off waiting for Windhorst's millions to arrive.

Even the recent victories over newly-promoted opposition come with reservations and caveats. Last week's home win over Paderborn came despite the away side enjoying considerably more of the ball and creating a number of good chances, while the thrashing of Cologne is tempered by the fact that the Billy Goats quickly lost playmakers Dominick Drexler to injury before being reduced to ten men before half-time.

"I'm happy that we were able to build on the Paderborn result and that we showed our quality on the pitch,” said Covic. "We're heading in the right direction and we want to continue next week against Düsseldorf."

After that come Werder Bremen, Hoffenheim and Dynamo Dresden in the cup before the historic trip to Köpenick to face Union – on paper, all games in which Hertha will be expected to deliver. 

"The future belongs to Berlin," they say, but it's up to Hertha to determine what that exactly that future looks like.