Why is newly minted Australian Open champion Angelique Kerber pictured on the site of the top football humor blog in Northeastern Illinois? Well it's because she is a Bremen native, whose victory thrilled the locals in the a.m. as they got ready for the visit of Hertha BSC to the Weserstadion to face Werder Bremen. And her success in stunning the tennis world clearly may have been a bad omen for a Berlin side looking to end a run of seven straight defeats up north to Angie's favourite team.
Things looked different this time. Strikes by Vladimir Darida and Marvin Plattenhardt put the visitors up 2-0 at half-time. That stretched Hertha's run of not allowing a goal to 462 minutes of competitive action, including 386 minutes in the Bundesliga. It was so easy that the Berlin police department was joking about an invasion in the Bremen penalty area (below). I made some pancakes to settle in for the second half.
PolizeiBerlinEinsatz
Einbruch bei @werderbremen. Täter kam durch den Strafraum. Keine Sofortmaßnahmen durch uns. Der Täter ist bekannt: @HerthaBSC. #Keinbruch
What could go wrong?
Hertha were on the verge of setting a club-record streak of not conceding when Fin Bartels raced in and sliced the Bremen deficit in half moments after the visitors nearly made it 3-0. Still, Pal Dardai's substitution of Johannes Van den Bergh proved to be a master stroke when his pinpoint cross found Salomon Kalou for a 3-1 lead in the 71st minute.
Alas, this is the dreaded Weserstadion. Fabian Lustenberger took down Anthony Ujah in the area, and Claudio Pizarro slotted home the penalty in the 75th. In quick succession, Werder won a corner kick and Santiago Garcia's goalbound header was headed in anyway before Pizarro struck in to claim a second and level the match. That's how it ended as Hertha's lead on third place was sliced to three points.
The news wasn't all bad since United States superstar John Anthony Brooks pledged his allegiance to the club through 2019. That, however, wasn't enough to prevent your faithful blogger from drinking himself into a stupor to lament the missing two points from yet another failed trip to Bremen.
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