Opposition Check: Borussia Dortmund

It could almost have been a journey back in time when Borussia Dortmund competed in the Champions League final at Wembley Stadium on June 1st: in 2013, BVB, then coached by Jürgen Klopp, met FC Bayern Munich for the final at the same venue. Eleven years later, Bayern failed in the semi-finals against Real Madrid, so the black and yellow will now face the royal team.

Review. The Dortmund team would like the outcome of the final to be different this time. Arjen Robben shot FCB to the Champions League title in the 89th minute. But one thing is worth repeating when looking through the black and yellow glasses and that is the win against Real Madrid. BVB already met the Royals in the preliminary round of the 2012/13 CL season. Klopp’s team won 2-1 at home and there was a remarkable 2-2 draw at the Estadio Bernabeu.

But that is not enough. In the semi-finals it was important to beat Real again, and Madrid’s strength in knockout games was well known. Once again BVB had an absolutely exceptional day, especially at home: Robert Lewandowski, who would then move to Bayern, scored four times and virtually single-handedly ensured the 4-1 first leg win. In the second leg, things looked comfortable for Dortmund for over 80 minutes, as Madrid had to score three goals. After Karim Benzema (83rd minute) and Sergio Ramos (88th minute) scored, it was a real nail-biter for Borussia. In the end, Lewandowski’s four goals from the first leg were enough and BVB moved into their first European Cup final since 1997.

Present. Eleven years later, the Henkelpott is now to be brought to the Ruhr area; Marco Reus would ultimately like to refine his last game in the black and yellow jersey. The Champions League victory would certainly be a sufficient consolation for the missed championship last year, when Dortmund lost the championship with a 2-2 draw against Mainz on the last matchday.

„Whether the conditions are always right when it comes to criticism? I don’t know. But it’s part of my job, and there’s no external pressure that can be as great as the pressure I put on myself. Because I do it every day „I want to get better and find better solutions. As long as the joy of the journey to success is greater than the pressure I feel, I’m happy to do it. And I can assure you: I’m really up for it,“ said Edin Terzic in an interview with Kicker. The Sauerland native knows the power of his club and knows how quickly the mood in Dortmund can change.

Terzic became assistant coach of BVB’s U17s in 2010; he previously worked as a scout for the club. The next big step was to come in 2013, from then on he worked in the Turkish Süper Lig for Beşiktaş Istanbul and was assistant coach to Slaven Bilić. Terzic followed this two years later to West Ham United in England, and was released in 2017. Terzic himself describes this dismissal as a very important event in his career. “I started to think about what kind of coach I actually want to be and what I want to stand for. That was on November 6th 2017, the day I left West Ham. It was the worst day of my professional life up to that point, but at the same time it was the beginning of something new,” the 41-year-old told Kicker.

In the summer of 2018, Terzic returned to BVB, although not as head coach at the time, but again as an assistant. After another two years as an assistant coach, he then became head coach for the first time in December 2020, at “his” BVB of all places. Those around him celebrated Terzic frenetically; he was seen as one of them. In May 2021, Dortmund was also able to celebrate the DFB Cup victory, it was Dortmund’s first title since 2017. But anyone who thought of a second “Jürgen Klopp era” was disappointed. Despite the title, it was already clear that Marco Rose would take over as coach for the new season.

However, Terzic’s absence from the head coach’s chair only lasted one season; the football teacher has been the boss of the black and yellow again since the summer of 2022 and had to accept the next „worst day“ of his career in May 2023. “I said straight after last season that I would have loved to have missed out on this experience. But this is now part of our path to one day achieving our goal,” said Terzic, summing up the lost championship on the last matchday of the 2022/23 season.

It wasn’t enough for them again this season; fifth place in the table has already been determined before the last matchday. But there’s still June 1st and the chance to climb to the European football throne with a win against Real Madrid.

Borussia from Dortmund still likes to play with the ball in their own ranks; in the ball possession statistics, BVB is in fourth place with 56 percent. The Black and Yellows are also doing well in terms of pass rate, also in fourth place in the league-wide comparison. The switching quality of players like Julian Brandt, Marco Reus and Donyell Malen should not be forgotten. Dortmund always manage to get into the transition game quickly after winning the ball.

In the Champions League they also showed another quality that has been supposedly denied them in recent years: mentality. In the semi-finals of the Champions League, BVB ran a total of 19 kilometers more than PSG in both games, while Dortmund ran the same distance for 180 minutes against the absolute mentality monsters of Atletico Madrid.

Injuries play a huge role in football and sports in general. Many great footballers have had their careers slowed down by injuries and injuries. Marco Reus, who will play his last game in Dortmund’s Signal-Iduna-Park on Saturday, is one of these players. His body repeatedly played tricks on the 34-year-old throughout his career; he missed almost 150 games at club level alone due to injury.

With Marco Reus, Borussia Dortmund is losing an absolute identification figure, a leader and, above all, a gifted footballer. In 390 Bundesliga games, the offensive player scored 155 times and prepared 117 more goals. In the all-time Bundesliga scorers list, the Dortmund native is in seventh place, just one place behind Claudio Pizarro.

And all of this after he had already been rejected from Dortmund’s U17 squad because his coach at the time, Peter Wazinski, thought he was physically too weak and Reus wasn’t robust enough. This was followed by a move to Ahlen, where the right-footer was promoted to the 2nd Bundesliga with Rot-Weiss in 2008. Just a year later, he personally took the step into the Bundesliga: Reus moved to Borussia, but not back to Dortmund, but to Mönchengladbach.

Reus impressed from the start on the Lower Rhine; in the 2011/12 season he had 30 points scorer. It was to be his last season in Gladbach, and the following summer he went back to Dortmund – exactly where he had already played at the age of six. Two more seasons followed with very strong numbers; in his first five years in the Bundesliga he always played at least 30 games.

But then the injury misery was to begin, Reus was ruled out for the 2014 World Cup due to a partial tear of the left anterior syndesmosis ligament and a bony ligament tear on the front of the heel bone. Reus also missed the 2016 European Championships due to pubic bone inflammation.

But despite many failures, the offensive player was appointed captain at BVB in 2018, and Reus held this position until 2023. In Dortmund he has already secured his legendary status, especially the cup victories in 2017 and 2021 will never be forgotten. And yet there will still be a big goal for Marco Reus after next Saturday: bring the trophy to Dortmund on June 1st and finally make himself immortal with Borussia by winning the premier class.