Hertha Berlin’s Vladimir Darida breaks Bundesliga distance record in second consecutive game
Since the Bundesliga burst back onto our screens in May, there has been a rush on TV subscriptions to watch the biggest football show on the planet. And one player viewers will have seen almost everywhere is Hertha Berlin’s Vladimir Darida, who has set a new league record for distance covered in a single game two weeks in a row.
The Czech midfielder has clearly used the recent enforced break to recharge his batteries and, despite playing three games in the space of nine days, set a new best-mark in the last of those when he covered 14.3km/8.9 miles in Hertha’s 2-0 win over Augsburg.
To cap it off, Darida even provided an assist for Krzysztof Piatek’s injury-time strike when he led a counter-attack.
It took him past the previous Bundesliga record since detailed data collection began, of which he was in fact the holder (14.2km/8.8 miles). But why not break that record a third time?
That’s just what the Berlin man did in the very next game when he covered 14.7km (9.1 miles) of the Signal Iduna Park pitch on Matchday 30. Unfortunately for the midfielder, who arrived in the Bundesliga at Freiburg back in 2013 and certainly knows the lay of the land, much of that distance was indeed spent chasing the ball in Hertha's 1-0 loss at Borussia Dortmund.
"It's a nice statistic but I would've rather had a goal and a point," Darida told broadcaster Sky following the game.
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He has nevertheless been a crucial cog in a Hertha wheel which, defeat to Dortmund notwithstanding, has been rotating and making up ground in the Bundesliga since the restart. Under Bruno Labbadia, they have raised their distance game to the point of being the greatest ground-coverers in their 2-2 draw with RB Leipzig on Matchday 29 (122.2km/75.9 miles), adding a collective extra 400 metres (438 yards) against Dortmund.
Not just Berlin have realised that going the extra mile pays off, however.
Bayern Munich's Joshua Kimmich has been in a league of his own for distance covered this season, totalling 357.4km (222.1 miles) – a whopping 23km (14.3 miles) more than his nearest challenger Sebastian Vasiliadis of Paderborn.
That included 13.7km (8.51 miles) in Der Klassiker – a record for a Bayern player in a single game. That was the most ground covered by any individual on Matchday 28, following on from his league-topping run-rates on seven other matchdays (26, 20, 19, 17, 6, 4, 2) and podium finishes on a further seven matchdays.
Add this to the new speed record of 36.49 km/h (22.67 mph) set by Achraf Hakimi on Matchday 20 and the fact that Schalke's Rabbi Matondo (35.97 km/h/22.35 mph), Cologne's Kingsley Ehizibue (35.85 km/h/22.3 mph) and Bayern's Kingsley Coman (35.66 km/h/22.16 mph) have been clocked going faster this term than any player in any previous Bundesliga season, since detailed data collection began in 2011/12, and you get the picture that players in the Bundesliga are working harder than ever for their teams.
So, as you remain at home settled in your sofa or relaxed in your armchair with your feet up, perhaps now you will realise why it feels so exhausting just to watch the Bundesliga stars in their high-octane action.
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