Hertha Berlin toys with new stadium idea to boost attendance

Berlin - With a return to the Champions League beckoning next season, Hertha Berlin is set to bring European football back to the Olympic Stadium, but the club is considering moving.

Built by the Nazi leadership to host the 1936 Summer Games and renovated to hold the 2006 World Cup final, Berlin's Olympic Stadium is a magnificent venue, steeped in history and allows fans a superb view of the action from all angles.

There's just one problem - there's virtually no atmosphere for home Hertha games.

It does not help that there is an athletics track between the fans and the pitch.

For their 14 home matches so far this season, Hertha attracted an average of 48,044 fans, who filled just over half of the capacity 75,000 places and left whole blocks empty.

It puts Hertha only eighth in terms of Bundesliga attendance compared with the likes of Bayern Munich (75,000), Borussia Dortmund (81,000) and Schalke (61,000) who regularly sell out.

The club has a contract to rent the Olympic Stadium until 2017, which is set to be extended.

But in a bid to boost attendance and generate atmosphere, Hertha officials want to look into whether they can build their own stadium, custom-made for football.

"There will soon be a feasibility study commissioned," Hertha's president Werner Gegenbauer announced to German daily Bild.

Hertha is having its best season for more than a decade.

They are third in the table with six games left, which will mean a first return to the Champions League since 1999-2000 if things stay as they are.

But the players have complained about the lack of supporters in recent weeks.

"It can't be that when we played against Schalke, which was third against fourth, the stadium wasn't full. Or that as against Ingolstadt only 40,000 come," said midfielder Alexander Baumjohann.

Stumbling blocks to any plans for a new stadium would be location and financing.

One possible location could be the closed Tempelhof Airport in the city centre, which is now an enormous park.

Gegenbauer has said no specific location has yet been envisioned, "but our thoughts must not stop at the city limits".

Without Hertha as their main tenants, the Olympic Stadium, which is a listed building, would struggle to operate as a business.

It hosts the occasional international, a handful of concerts and the annual German Cup final, meaning modernisation could be an option.