Dardai ejects Sunjic from training, likens lack of team spirit to “cold soup”

Newly reinstalled Hertha BSC trainer Pal Dardai has turned up the heat in his first Sunday post-match training session back in charge of the squad, throwing Ivan Sunjic off the pitch and calling for complete honesty within his team. 

No stranger to the art of a training ground dust-up, Hertha head-coach Pal Dardai quickly ejected Ivan Sunjic from a televised team training session this morning. The Birmingham City loanee hasn’t featured much at all for the capital city side in the “Rück-runde”, making only three very brief relief appearances over the last 11 matchdays. Oftentimes, Sunjic hasn’t even been selected for the matchday squad.

Dardai didn’t select either Sunjic or Wilfried Kanga for his bench in Saturday’s 2-4 defeat to SV Werder Bremen. In Kanga’s case, Dardai made clear that he didn’t approve of the Ivorian striker’s body language during the training week. Sunjic was sent to the showers early on Sunday just after warm ups. Dardai threw the 26-year-old off the ground with a fully audible “piss off!”.

Afterwards during a brief media round, the long-time club man spoke on the need for his team to work together in the service of a “team spirit”. The 47-year-old made no apologies for his candor. In true Hungarian fashion, Dardai likened his outspoken frankness to the importance of telling someone who had prepared soup for him that the meal was unacceptable.

“I see that the players are nice and get along super. But team spirit I don’t see,” the coach noted, In a team, in a family, you have to be honest. If the soup is cold, you have to say so, otherwise you’ll eat bad soup your whole life. If your wife loves you, you’ll get a warm soup next time. You have to see team spirit on the pitch, I don’t see it.”

Dardai also slammed his team’s defending as “kindergarten level”, called for greater tactical discipline, and complained that efforts in set-piece-training were nowhere near where he needed them to be. The gaffer did call the challenging task of avoiding relegation “achievable” provided that “everyone focuses, participates, and coalesces.”

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— Sky Sport (@SkySportDE) April 23, 2023

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