Derry Scherhant

Raised in Berlin, Derry Lionel Scherhant has spent his entire career with German clubs in the capital: SC Charlottenburg, Tennis Borussia Berlin, FC Viktoria 1889 Berlin, Berliner SC, and Hertha BSC. Playing as a winger, he has been one of the highlights of the German team, with eight goals and four assists in twenty-two games. The youngster was born in November 2002 and has two caps for Germany’s Under-20s.

From a physical point of view, Derry is a well-built player. He has a medium-high build, long legs, and a good ability to extend his body in dueling situations (he can handle opponents’ loads well). Also, he has a morphologically mesomorphic body. His traveling speed is high. However, if Scherhant improves his acceleration, he could become an even faster player. His running speed is above average, and that makes all the difference in the execution of different technical actions. He’s a player who doesn’t appear to be agile but shows the opposite when he has the ball.

Technically, Scherhant is a decent developed player in his position on the pitch. He can play on both wings as a winger, so Derry is a player who likes to wait on the outside to attack the central corridor carrying the ball. He is a skillful dribbler (both short and when he has space to run) and has a good capacity for trickery, which, when combined with his speed of execution, makes him a difficult player to defend against. When he drives or dribbles, he has two preferred routes as soon as he gets close to the opponent’s area: Scherhant can either look for the by-line to cross (late or to the first post) with his left foot, or he can look for the edge of the area to balloon a cross to the second post or try to finish powerfully also to the second post. However, the Hertha BSC player isn’t just a dribbler. He’s a player who knows how to pause the game and who looks for the pass when he realizes he’s not in a position to get forward on his own. He also can attract pressure, link up in short spaces and explode past the opposing centre-back.

Hertha BSC’s game model doesn’t call for unbridled high pressure that demands a lot from the players from a physical point of view. As such, Derry is a player who knows how to close down the central corridor, providing defensive cover for his team-mates so that he can leap to press the ball carrier at the right time. However, he needs to improve the timing of his jumps, as he sometimes arrives late – I think Lionel can do this if he raises his height slightly on the pitch. In moments of defensive organization, in a medium or low block, the German winger is solid in assisting the full-back on his side and executing the defensive tasks that the game requires very well. In defensive transition, he is a player who reacts aggressively, managing to win the ball back after losing it. He can also recover his position at a decent speed.

Derry is a player with a good competitive attitude in every moment of the game. He tends to be available at all times, and, as a result, his decision-making is very good. He’s a player who knows what he can do but who is looking for what’s best for the team and not just what’s best for himself in a given context.

At the moment, Scherhant is one of Hertha BSC’s best players, along with Ibrahim Maza and Michael Cuisance. He’s in good form, and that’s reflected in the good performance he brings to the Berlin team’s games. The rest of the season will be crucial to solidify his numbers in terms of goals and assists so that he can then make the leap. As such, I believe that by limiting his market to Germany, he could be an interesting player for clubs like VfB Stuttgart or VfL Wolfsburg.