"It's been a magnificent season"

Berlin – The season is over. The summer break is upon us. However, Michael Preetz is one man who won’t have that much time to take a breather over the coming weeks as he has tasks ahead of him. Hertha’s sporting director wants to “put things on the right track“ for the coming season and is hoping to prepare the club for the challenge of playing Europa League football next season. The first step has already been made by signing Mathew Leckie from FC Ingolstadt. His verdict on last season, what he experienced over the course of the campaign and his plans for the transfer market which is now open are all discussed below. 

Michael Preetz on…

… his feelings after the 6-2 defeat to Leverkusen and finishing 6th in the table:Directly after the game the overriding feeling was, of course, one of disappointment. We wanted to win our last game and celebrate with the fans. On reflection though I can say that it’s been a magnificent season. We had many great moments, many of which came at the Olympiastadion. The team had a fanatstic first half of the season. The second half was a little patchy. But we managed to qualify for Europe and that’s a great result! Now we’ll have our fingers crossed for Dortmund to win the cup final so that we go straight into the group stage. 

… the performance of Hertha BSC:We had a fantastic 2015/16 season and finished seventh in the league. We managed to maintain the same level of performance and develop the players further this season. We were able to build on our strong home form and celebrated some tremendous performances at the Olympiastadion. This has also been based on great team togetherness.

…the season on the whole:You only have to look back over the season and the table to see where the team is at, which a lot of football experts predicted. Teams like Wolfsburg, Schalke, Borussia Mönchengladbach – elite clubs with much bigger squads than us have finished below us in the table. That alone shows what a fantastic job our boys have done over the last year. The Bundesliga is incredibly tight so you need to constantly be alert. Anything can happen behind Bayern Munich and this season Leipzig and Dortmund as well. So from this perspective you can’t praise the performance of the team highly enough.

… Ondrej Duda:Ondrej is effectively like a new signing for the coming season. He had a big injury, but showed glimpses of the huge potential that he has. It’s very important for him that he has a goo dpre-season and his body is ready to start next season.

… the development of the young players:This season we’ve developed a lot of players. Marvin Plattenhardt was called up to the national team for the first time and that is a reward for the great work that he has done over the last few years. It also shows what great work we’ve done over the last few years. The same goes for Niklas Stark and Mitchell Weiser who have both been selected for Germany’s U21 sqaud for the EUROS in Poland. In Jordan Torunarigha and Maximilian Mittelstädt we’ve also turned two more youngsters into Bundesliga players. Another U18 talent is also knocking on the door of the first team. This shows that we have a great academy. Pál Dárdai will always give young players another chance and that is something that won’t change next season.