Important to remember he's young and debuting in a really tough league but a great chance for the kid to make an impression and vie for some serious PT this year.
Hey it is not unprecedented that a 19 year old grabs hold and never let's go. Subotic did it, and before him Per Mertesacker established himself as a starter for Hannover in the Bundesliga (one level higher) at CB at approximately the same age. He can do it.
Obviously he CAN do it. He's obviously talented buy my point is that if he performs poorly that its important to keep in my mind that its not the end of the world.
Hertha Berlin vs Juventus highlights. Starting at 1:36 Brooks did really well stopping #27 from having a shot on goal.
In the few things I could find in the Italian press regarding his performance, Brooks seemed to get pretty good reviews.
Looks like they had a chance for a point the entire way. Gave up a last minute goal on a counter, and one would expect them to be pushing up for the tie. Kid looks pretty fast.
Hertha's in BundII right? So while that's a good league, I think he can do it. You're general sentiment is correct, though. Patience is required................
I too think he's up to the challenge. Im quite surprised that he has received little attention (at least thats been relayed to American media members) from the German YNT setup as he clearly is talented and has unique physical tools. You'd think they would be all over a 19 yr old whom Bayern knew enough about to offer a nice pro contract. Having said this, i know nothing of what Germany has in their youth pipelines and maybe they are truly loaded as has been the case lately (Gotze, Reus, Schirrle, Badstuber).
Lascho-I know they are now relegated, but how is that Hertha is not historically up with the top clubs in Germany. They sold a lot of tickets per game (didn't they?) when in the Bundesliga (so I would think their tix revenue is strong). They are located in a huge city/metropolis, which I would think could be good for merchandise sales. I would think the potential to have a strong balance sheet rivals all but Dortmund, Bayern, etc. I would think local tv deals could be strong. I know they are not known for lots of championships, but why is it that such a big club is struggling?
They aren't historically a big club, 13th in the "all time Bundesliga table", http://www.fussballdaten.de/bundesliga/ewigetabelle/ ; with a huge distance to the top ten Bayern, Bremen, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Dortmund, Gladbach, Cologne, Schalke, Kaiserslautern, Frankfurt. These clubs are the core of the Bundesliga, and of German soccer. Hertha haven't won anything since the 1930s. More important: They've never been really important in Berlin, and nobody cares about them anywhere else in Germany. The history of Berlin is important to understand the topic. West Berlin was an isle on a different planet. Nobody in West Germany really cared about Berlin, or connected to it; especially with the traditional mentality of oldschool native Berliners that they and their city were something special. "Yeah, really special... we pay for you, and you are special because of... what?" Old West Berlin was a crude mixture of extremely provincial self-imaginated wannabe Reichshauptstadt guys fighting communism, and young lefties without a clear goal for their life, and without any connection to the "old Berlin". West Berlin had something like 1.4 million citizens, but I guess that maybe less than half of them were born in Berlin, and of German origin (and not fans of Galatasaray or Fenerbahce). Hertha played in BL2 from 1980-1997 (2 years in BL1, with immediate relegation being desperate last in between), so they completely lost one or two generations of fans. Hertha came back in 1997, and tried to re-brand a boring club for old men who probably never made the trip 2 kilometers east to the "new part of the city" as the "capital club". It didn't really work. The people in East Berlin have their own clubs, most important Union Berlin (also in BL2 this year), and the newcomers to Berlin keep their old clubs. Some national clubs like Gladbach even have an office in Berlin for "supporters service East"; and an important reason for their strong ticket sales is the fact that they sell 5-15.000 tickets to away supporters against the big clubs. They sold 7.000 tickets for the UEFA Cup game vs Benfica some years ago when they were struggling; 4.000 to the kids of Portuguese immigrants, and 3.000 to Berliners who wanted to see their club in the UEFA club when they were struggling. Hertha's "natural catchment area" isn't the 4M Berlin area; it's just some 500.000 oldschool Westberliner who were already there when Kennedy was a Berliner. They clumsily tried to re-invent the club, but "hey, Berlin is the greatest! We are the greatest!" doesn't work in federal Germany, and especially not in the traditional German soccer culture. Hertha is widely regarded as an extremely boring, bland, useless club.
Hertha did ok when they reached the Champions League second group stage in 1999-2000 they were able to beat Chelsea, AC Milan and draw Barcelona at home.
So - what? Nobody cared about that, for good reasons. Lots of clubs play lots of games. I'm pretty sure you won't find 100 people in Germany who know Hertha's results of the second group stage in 99/00 out of their head; and probably less than 10 outside of Berlin.
I think you're being a bit too critical of Hertha saying that they are a useless club, yes they have have been mismanaged a lot but just look at last season they had the 5th most attendance in the Bundesliga at 54K average attendance per game. http://soccernet.espn.go.com/stats/attendance/_/league/ger.1/year/2011/german-bundesliga?cc=5901
Your table doesn't make any sense, better take this one: http://www.transfermarkt.de/de/1-bundesliga/besucherzahlen/wettbewerb_L1.html Right, Hertha looks solid; because they have thousands of guest supporters in their own city, they never sell out their huge stadium, and the home crowd is rather between 9th and 12th. Gate receipts aren't decisive today, so "5th most home tickets sold" isn't an indicator for "5th most financially powerful club". A better indicator for a club's popularity is "away stadiums sold out". Hertha only packed the stadiums at Munich, Dortmund and tiny Wolfsburg, which are usually always sold-out. Other clubs couldn't sell the tickets for the visitor's section. Hertha are above several clubs in the >50.000 range, because there's more or less no limit for their home crowd, and they can't even bring a 2.000 guest crowd to a 54.000 stadium, so they keep the numbers of other clubs low.
The ESPN table has the same team ranks as the transfermarkt but the numbers are different. Also it would be really hard for the majority of the Bundesliga clubs to sell out if they played in the beautiful Olympiastadion, the only German clubs that would probably be able to sell out if they played in the Olympiastadion would be Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich.
The Olympiastadion is actually not beautiful, but rather windy, cold and rainy, and the toilets are a mess. It's more historical than beautiful anyway in case you're not a Nazi, but lots of clubs could sell out an 80.000 stadium for several games. It's just Hertha's advantage that they're the only club playing in a stadium like that for a symbolic rent.
As an aside, I once read that the Olympiastadion survived the war because the Allies used it as an aerial reference point: once you fly past the stadium, bombs away!
A couple of additional points: Yes, Hertha sell a lot of tickets, but ticket revenue isn't a decisive factor in Germany, since ticket prices are kept deliberately low. Borussia Dortmund, with the third highest average attendence in all of Europe, actually only make 28 Million Euro per season from tickets, compared to clubs from the EPL, particularly London clubs like Arsenal, who make well over 100 Million Euro per season. Even Tottenham with their 39k attendence make 48 Million Euros per season. The advantages of playing in the Olympiastadium for Hertha are only slight, and often outweighted by the disadvantages. The running track (kept for history's sake) and the overbearing architecture can really stiffle the atmosphere. Though it is an amazing stadium when sold- out. Many people indeed prefer Union Berlin, Lascho already mentioned them, because the fan- experience there is regarded to be much better. As to television, Germany uses collective bargaining to sell television rights, so no advantages there. Also, the television deal, while greatly improved in the last round of negotiations, is still way behind the EPL, Serie A, and even League Un. Mostly because Pay- TV has not become as popular as in other countries. Finally, one of the probably biggest things that hampers Hertha is the lack of industry in Berlin. Since ticket prices and television bring in relatively little money compared to other leagues, clubs greatly rely on their commercial revenue, i.e. getting in your huge international corporations to sponsor you (Bayern are probably the ones that best use that). Due to it's history as outlined, there isn't much industry going on in Berlin, it is actually one of the poorest cities in Germany, with high unemployment and heavily in debt. This is reenforced by German federalism. The financial centre sits in Frankfurt, the industrial core in the South (Bayern), South- West (Baden- Würtemberg), and the North to some extent (Hamburg), with some of the former Eastern States rapidly catching up like Thüringen. Unfortunately for Berlin, their catch- ment area (i.e. Brandenburg) isn't one of those regions. Add in a general mismanagement of the club (Dieter Hoeneß) and overly grande ambitions, and you can see why they are struggling.
One could also have linked to the Bijev thread (although, admittedly not the most obvious place to look for infomation on Berlin): https://www.bigsoccer.com/community/threads/villyan-bijev-at-fortuna-düsseldorf.1782363/page-13
The 2. Bundesliga season kicks off today and Brooks is in the starting lineup against Paderborn. According to kicker: http://www.kicker.de/news/fussball/...rschau_hertha-bsc-29_sc-paderborn-07-109.html The game ist 2:30pm ET and is the only game in that time slot. I assume that means German TV which hopefully means quality streams.
Brooks is certainly lucky that his debut against Paderborn should come only after Snipin' Matt Taylor has moved on.