Felix Magath and Scottish sidekick Fotheringham ‘jolt’ Hertha into life

It felt as if the appointment of Felix Magath was peak Hertha. We should have known better. On the eve of the first game of the new era, at home to Champions League-chasing Hoffenheim, the new coach tested positive for Covid, and was confined to his Berlin hotel room. When it became known that Magath would be unable to take to the touchline for his projected debut with illness, it felt utterly typical of Hertha’s wretched season to date. “I thought he was joking,” said sporting director Fredi Bobic of the moment when he took Magath’s call to receive the news.

Those waiting for a must-watch Hertha – for better or for worse – might have felt deflated, but they need not have worried. Enter Mark Fotheringham, the 38-year-old Scot who played at Celtic, Norwich, briefly under Magath at Fulham and, more importantly, a German speaker with experience as assistant to former Magath foil Tomas Oral at Karlsruhe and Ingolstadt.

While the 68-year-old paced his room in quarantine, Fotheringham prowled the touchline, giving Hertha presence and personality. “You can tell that the team has been given a jolt,” said defender Niklas Stark. “Mark is an amazing guy, and the energy he has is amazing.” Before Christmas, Fotheringham was being linked with the Dunfermline job, after their German takeover last year. Now, he was leading a Bundesliga giant, and winning.

Yes, winning. Hertha’s first victory in 2022 was courtesy of a performance from a team that looked unlike anything else that had emerged from the Olympiastadion’s home dressing rooms in recent months, and lifted the team out of the bottom two. It was easy to look at the first line-up of the Magath/Fotheringham regime and think that three central defenders, with Stark just in front of