By Ben McFadyean.
Nuri Sahin’s Dortmund team was once again overwhelmed by a significantly less impressive side in the form of the Serie A’s seventh-placed Bologna side, that have only won once since December, in the 2-1 Champions League defeat at the 36,000 Stadio Renato del Ara. The board took immediate action by releasing former midfielder Sahin from his position as manager.
Between the league and European competition, this is the fourth loss on the trot for the side. The defeat means BVB will be forced to play in the playoffs for a place in the last 16 unless they can win against Shakhtar Donetsk in the final preliminary round game, and other results go their way, on the 29th.
The Champions League has offered some respite this season, especially the 7-1 thumping of Celtic and the 3:0 away win at Club Brugge. Losing initiative in the competition is far from a scenario that had been anticipated or even looked likely after the side’s tentative performance in the first half in Italy.
Sahin, who is replaced by U19 coach Mike Tullberg on an interim basis, will offer some respite from the fans’ criticisms, but there is more to the crisis than replacing the manager.
The way the team has played, especially away this season, has brought back bad memories of the 1980s again. The difference is that the squad is worth over half a billion euros now, and in most fans’ minds, in spite of Bayer Leverkusen, it is still the second team in the Bundesliga.
No matter how much the fans value the memories of sporting director Sebastian Kehl, managing director Lars Ricken, and Nuri as players, it’s getting harder and harder to make up excuses for the club legends. Most would agree that based on results alone, Nuri’s departure is the right decision.
Even without mentioning the ongoing rows between the majority of the members and the club about the controversial sponsorship deal with armaments maker Rheinmetall, which shows no end in sight, the cracks at Westfalenstadion are profound, as this outlines.
My own deep love affair with Borussia Dortmund is currently in what is probably its biggest crisis this season.
I became an ardent fan of BVB as a child in the 1980s when my Dortmund-born and raised stepfather Erhard took me to a game for the first time. Ever since then, BVB has been at the centre of most weekends.
Despite the ups and downs—and for those who were fans before the highs of the mid-1990s, there were primarily downs in the Bundesliga era—I would have spoken up for Borussia in any argument.
We Borussen can live without success as long as we have each other. The 82,000-capacity Westfalenstadion is our home; we don’t need anything else.
Like most football fans, my week was saved as long as my team won. Right now, though, I am not very happy about being a fan of my team. Just how bad is it, and why? I will elaborate.
On Friday, I hoped Borussia wouldn’t equalize in the game’s final stages at Frankfurt’s Waldstadion. How can this be? It’s the way the side is playing.
In recent months, I have not been able to stand the sight of the team dragging themselves from one limp performance to the next.
This is not my BVB; I have just wanted the pain to end.
To put this into context, I went through almost relegation and the playoffs against Fortuna Köln in 1985/86, but even then, I didn’t suffer as much as I do under former BVB midfielder, and now former coach Sahin.
Another heart-stopping moment was the club’s near bankruptcy in 2005 when it was €130m in debt due to the now disgraced former Chairman Gerd Niebaum’s unsuccessful attempts to outspend Bayern on the pitch and successful expansion of the ground to become Germany’s most significant.
I never doubted the club, even in the darkest of times. I just stood back a bit further, hoping the light in the tunnel would not turn out to be a train but rather the way out.
My belief was vindicated with the appointment of Jürgen Klopp, but a whole three years later.
The black and yellow wound in me healed again in the era of ‘Das Wunderkind’ from Mainz 05. It wasn’t just the back-to-back title wins; it was the way we played. His vision of Gegenpressing brought infectious immensely energetic, relentless total football at breakneck speeds to our game.
As overwhelmingly uplifting as seeing the Meisterschaft win in 2011, and even more so the Double, with that 5:2 in the Pokal final over Bayern, in 2011/12 was, most unforgettable was celebrating with the 500,000 in the working-class district of Borsigplatz, where our club was founded in 1909.
The people of Bayern have always had deeper pockets than us in the coal mining region of the Ruhrgebiet, where I lived from the age of 12. It has never come as a surprise to see the Rekordmeister dig in deep for one BVB legend after another: Thomas Helmer, Mats Hummels, Mario Götze, and Robert Lewandowski, to name a few.
No less after the all-German Champions League final at Wembley in 2013. The BVB fight once more went down to the wire. Hope overcame all fears once more when a rumoured 100,000 Black and Yellows travelled to London that day in May.
I greeted more than a thousand who poured into the Flavas Bar and Grill in Ealing for the final day watch party for our newly-founded Dortmund Fan Club London alone. A day, despite the loss, I will never forget.
The trend of coming in second-best continued the following season, in 2013/14. What was worse, it was with a massive nineteen-point deficit on the leaders.
For most of the season, the Rekordmeister are totally out of sight. Even the most hopeful Dortmunder knew something was starting to go badly wrong. There was an impending sense of doom, but most of the side that swept all before it was still intact, and BVB still had Kloppo, so we kept the faith.
Under the leadership of Hans-Joachim ‘Aki’ Watzke, the management poured resources into the 2014/15 transfer market in the summer. In particular, the signing of the Serie A Capocannoniere Ciro Immobile from Lazio as cover for the recently departed Robert Lewandowski, as if you could replace the Poland captain, inspired once more.
By Christmas, however, all remaining belief that Klopp was still the answer dissipated. Our Westfalian club was at the bottom of the table at the Winterpause, and as for Ciro, he made twenty-four appearances and bagged three goals all season. The Dolce Vita this was not.
It was very long overdue when the ‘normal one’ announced his departure in May 2015 despite directing the side to the Pokal final and a Europa League qualifier spot in seventh place. Like in any relationship, you know when the bridges can no longer be mended, and it’s time to move on. 2014/15 was that season.
Looking back ten years later, the team’s performances and the back-to-back titles under Jürgen seem even more significant to me. The contrast with the gradual downgrade that has happened in recent seasons could not be more critical.
Whilst our club has qualified for Europe in all of the seasons since then and made a respectable profit in all but the two pandemic-hit seasons, the impressive numbers off the pitch have gradually been undermined by bad decisions on it.
Since the ” normal one, “ we have had eight managers—far from the four our club had in season 1983/84—but there has been no stability. The new England coach, Thomas Tuchel, was the last coach of the calibre that ought to lead a club like Eight-time Champion Borussia Dortmund credibly.
Experienced coaches like Marco Rose and Lucien Favre have given way for also-rans like Peter Stöger or inexperienced candidates like Edin Terzic and Nuri Sahin.
The coaching zone is not the only level Borussia has been selling itself short. The decision to replace the club’s record player in terms of goals scored, Michael Zorc, as sporting director, even after a two-season ‘apprenticeship’ under the visionary leader in favour of Sebastian Kehl, has looked all but misguided.
Whilst the transfer decisions are spread across a panel of decision-makers, including Hans-Joachim Watzke, there have been too many bad ones, including Antony Modeste, Salih Özcan, Sebastien Haller, Marin Pongračić, Donyell Malen and Reinier Jesus, on the incoming side alone to pretend the former captain Kehl is a success as a sporting director.
There is too much short-term thinking, which often feels unworthy of what are, in most neutrals’ minds, simply the best fans in the world. Could Jadon Sancho and Ian Maatsen have been held for one?
Ian Maatsen was the best left-back to grace our team in a decade and has looked far from comfortable since leaving. A tremendous opportunity to strengthen the team long term missed all too reminiscent of the loss of Achraf Hakimi in 2019-20.
In recent seasons, our club has simply not reinvested the huge financial wins from the sales of Erling Haaland, Jadon Sancho, Jude Bellingham, or, dare I say it, Ousmane Dembele, well at all.
Of the current season’s batch of transfers, only Pascal Gross and Serhou Guirassy are primarily beyond reproach.
The downward trend has seriously jeopardized BVB’s role as number two in the Bundesliga, at least since last season. The competition doesn’t sleep, as Bayer Leverkusen has shown, and Eintracht Frankfurt, VfB Stuttgart, and RB Leipzig are not far behind.
It’s not just my connection to the club that’s being increasingly shaken by the wrong turns and limited vision at the club. The more fans you speak to, the more you realize that most Borussia fans feel the same way. And yet we all keep showing our loyalty; the average attendance in 24/25 remains a stubborn 81,000 – Die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt (the hope dies last).
When I started going in the 1980s, I always looked forward to Borussia’s home games. With the exception of 1987/88 and 89/90, we were never among the European qualifiers, but that was okay.
Victories were rare for our Black and Yellows in my first seasons in the Gelbe Wand with my stepfather from the Dortmund district of Oespel. What we did have, however, were players like Günther Kutowski, Murdo MacLeod, Frank Pagelsdorf, Frank Mill, or Norbert Dickel, all players who wore the badge with pride and gave it their all.
As much as you can only admire the current crop of gifted and incredibly well-paid international superstars, there is a lack of leadership in the side, and above all identification with the club which is beyond most on the Südtribüne‘s understanding.
Dortmund people work hard, and what the fans value is fighters. It’s simple. A new coach is a step in the right direction when it comes, but what is needed is a more profound, ‘back-to-basics’ change at our club.
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