A Difficult Night in Berlin

It goes without saying that football was secondary in Berlin on Wednesday night as Hertha BSC cruised past Darmstadt 2-0 to wrap up the 2016 part of the campaign. Just the day before in the pre-match press conference was a somber atmosphere as the details were presented about additional security at the Olympiastadion after the deadly attack at the Breitscheidplatz Christmas Market killed 12 and injured about 50 more and shook the nation.  Coach Pal Dardai said: "Berlin should remain strong and stand together."

The Hertha and Darmstadt players locked arm in arm before the match. There was football to be played but it is clear that things will no longer be the same in the nation's capital. The attack took place not too far from Zoo Berlin, and an eerie quiet settled in throughout the city.

A mid-week fixture in the cold against the bottom side in the league was never going to fill the cavernous stadium, and a crowd of slightly more than 31,000 came to see the match. The showdown for the Herbstmeisterschaft (winter champion) between Bayern and RB Leipzig  surely left some people home, although it is clear there was more to it than that.

The drab first half featured no goals as Hertha's goalless streak stretched into five halves of football in the tense night. Thankfully, Marvin Plattenhardt stepped up and delivered one of the best freekicks you will ever see at the :50 mark below:

The hosts added a Salomon Kalou header and saluted the crowd before the post-game reaction was as much about the mood in the city compared to what really was a dreadful match. Said Dardai: "It is difficult to talk about the attack. We need to stick together at this time."  Said Kalou: "We won for the city of Berlin. Our fans showed that love is more important than anything else."

Perhaps more notable was that among each team's substitutes used were Anis Ben-Hatira for Darmstadt and Sami Allagui for Hertha. The Berlin-born Ben-Hatira played for Hertha between 2011-16 while Allagui, also German-born, returned from a lengthy injury lay-off for a 12-minute cameo.

Certainly Ben-Hatira and Allagui faced the most difficult set of circumstances to play Wednesday night. Both are Tunisian internationals and the suspect at large is a Tunisian and former asylum seeker.  If Hertha ever had an advantage in the Bundesliga, it was supposedly the diversity of the city that allowed Ben-Hatira and Bayern Munich star Jerome Boateng among others to come through the youth system. That multiculturalism is under attack now by this woman, a politician on the rise who suggested that German border guards "use firearms if necessary" to prevent illegals from crossing into the nation.

The geographic location of Germany has always helped the Bundesliga link top international footballers from Western and Eastern Europe in a way that the other continental footballing countries could not. Players from North America, South America, Africa and Asia have also found the league to be a happy landing spot to establish their initial careers because of this, and also because of many clubs' willingness to give younger players opportunities.

This attack came on the heels of the one this summer in Munich. Sadly, the grim reality of these incidents was evident on the final day of the Bundesliga season in 2016.