Part 2 - The first week
http://www.spox.com/de/sport/fussball/zweiteliga/1006/Bilder/michael-preetz-fuehrungsstil-514.jpgMichael Preetz has taken a huge chance in signing 28 year old Ernst Mertens
I arrived at Hanns-Braun-Straße at 7.45 am 14th of June 2011, I was greeted by Preetz who said that he had been there since 6 in order to make everything ready for the new manager, who was due to arrive at 8. At a few minutes past 8 an old Opel drove up to the front entrance of the main building. Its driver was a young man, roughly my age; he was a tall man, skinny and with a head filled with golden curls. He wore just a plain white t-shirt and jeans. He looked more like your average college student than a football manager. He walked through the front door, where I was still talking to Michael Preetz, the young man came up to us and greeted me with: “Hallo, Ich bin Ernst.” His large booming voice took me by surprise and my jaw must have hit the floor because Ernst gave me a puzzled look. I hadn’t for a second thought that he could be the new manager, even though I knew he was only 28.
The first thing on Ernst Mertens’ agenda was to meet with me; we had to establish a few ground rules for my writing. It turned out that during contract negotiations it was Mertens’ idea to have a journalist around to make sure everything was spun the right way, when communicating with the press. He had heard of me because one of his friends was the editor of one of the online magazines that had bought an article I had written, which was about the dressing room disputes of HSV earlier in the year. It was my best piece and got printed in a local Hamburg newspaper. We spent an hour talking about football, journalism, psychology, and about our common feeling of surprise of being seated where we were. It turned out that Ernst trusted me enough to let me follow him everywhere or at least the places where he was in charge, so the board room was off limits, but we agreed that he would give me the bits and pieces he was allowed to reveal.
Ernst’s next move was to meet with the club staff. He walked into the management quarters and saw his name already on the door. Michael Peetz had revealed to me earlier that the sign had been hung up no more than half an hour ago, but it looked professional and welcoming. He met with his staff who offered him opinions on everything going on inside and outside the club. After he had dismissed the scouts and coaches by agreeing to almost all of their suggestions it was on to talking to the team. This was a much harder task, even though he was younger than anyone else employed as a staff member there was also several players who was older than him and even more who considered themselves contemporaries. He started out by rattling the cage and saying that none of them was safe, not from being cut from the first team, not from being transferred and not from getting yelled at if they didn’t do as he pleased. I noticed that Peter Niemeyer looked away and looked disinterested, much like many in the team. There didn’t seem to be much respect around Ernst Mertens a young man who had just come in from Kreuzberg in his old Opel Astra.
It didn’t take long for Ernst to stir things up by showing he was serious about no one could feel safe. Two days after he had taken over he sold Peter Niemeyer to Leverkusen for 5.000.000 € as he said: “We need the money and he didn’t fit in to our plans”. Soon after the Leverkusen agreement was done Mertens called up one of his old friends and asked about that Mexican kid, if he would be interested in coming to Germany. After a week in charge it was publicized that Carlos Fierro would be joining Hertha Berlin on the 24th of july 2012, a little over a year away.
