When you’re an American sportswriter visiting Borussia Dortmund‘s Signal Iduna Park for the first time, the first thing the folks at the club will do is thank you for coming. The second thing they’ll do is congratulate you for what you’re about to experience. Why? Because they know it’s going to live up to your expectations.
With 81,000 belting out “You’ll Never Walk Alone” before the match, with the 25,000-fan, free-standing Yellow Wall breathing and swaying for two hours, with the sheer volume that accompanies anything even remotely exciting (or anything the crowd feels should be exciting), you’re in for a treat, and they know it. The Westfalenstadion, as it was originally (and is still frequently) called, is the Lambeau Field of European soccer. It turned 50 this spring, and it is a destination for the sports tourist in a city that has the passion to overcome its lack of population.
Dortmund is much bigger than Green Bay, Wisconsin, granted, but it’s still only the ninth-most populous city in Germany and the third largest in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, making it an unlikely home for the country’s second-largest club. But even during a frustrating season, that’s exactly what Borussia Dortmund are.
BVB have firmly established themselves as a second-tier club in European football, typically somewhere between about 10th and 15th best. They spend within their means, having forever internalized the lessons of when ambition drove them to the brink of bankruptcy. Over the past decade, they have employed some of the best young players in the world — Erling Haaland, Jude Bellingham, Ilkay Gündogan, Robert Lewandowski, Ousmane Dembélé, Mario Götze, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Jadon Sancho, Ciro Immobile, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Christian Pulisic — and since reaching the Champions League final in 2013, they have reached the quarterfinals four more times. (They could advance further this spring, but it will take a comeback after a 2-1 loss to Atletico Madrid in Wednesday’s quarterfinal first leg.)
This season has gone a little differently than most. They did once again reach the Champions League quarterfinals, and their performance clinched a spot in next summer’s expanded FIFA Club World Cup in the U.S. But thanks to a dreadful turn of form in November, BVB finds itself in a dogfight with RB Leipzig for fourth place in the Bundesliga. And with Bayern Munich finally ceding the German crown for the first time in 12 years, it’s somehow going to go somewhere other than Dortmund. Bayer Leverkusen, the hour away rival run by the pharmaceutical giant, could clinch the Bundesliga title as soon as this weekend.
Could Borussia Dortmund ever be more again? More than the 11th-or-so best team in Europe? More than a Champions League quarterfinalist? More than the club that employs the bright young star before he moves on to somewhere bigger? Life is usually good at the Westfalenstadion, but could it be better?
What exactly is Borussia Dortmund in 2024, anyway?
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‘This region is pretty well-known for hard work’
“During his very first press conference, [Jurgen] Klopp said he couldn’t promise titles but would promise what he termed ‘full-throttle football,'” former ESPN contributor Uli Hesse wrote of the former BVB coach in his 2019 book, “Building the Yellow Wall: The Incredible Rise and Cult Appeal of Borussia Dortmund.”
“Then he said: ‘If games become boring, they lose their right to exist.’ It was almost as if he had read a manual on how to win black-and-yellow hearts.”
The urgency of the Signal Iduna crowd becomes most noticeable in two specific moments during any given match. The first comes when BVB wins the ball back from its opponent. If there is any hesitation from a Borussia player about pushing the ball immediately up the pitch and starting a full-fledged counterattack, a roar from the crowd urges him to do so. The second comes when a player has the ball with any space in the attacking third; another roar urges him to shoot the ball immediately. If the player doesn’t respond as directed, the roar almost turns into a moan. Do something. At all times, look to do something.
“Hard work, from the first to the last minute,” BVB marketing director Carsten Cramer said when asked what fans expect from the club. “Passion, emotion, energy, intensity, authenticity, closeness. Don’t separate the players from the supporters — get the feeling of being part of the club and part of the game [from them]. That is important.”
To some degree, this could be said of any fan base in any part of any country, but in the industrial North Rhine-Westphalia region, which is overloaded with clubs that boast shockingly passionate fan bases — it houses five current Bundesliga teams (BVB, Bayer Leverkusen, Borussia Monchengladbach, Koln and Bochum), plus four teams in the second division (Fortuna Dusseldorf, VfL Osnabruck, Paderborn and the enormous but debt-stricken Schalke) — this idea is particularly true.
“It’s a special atmosphere in the stadium, and it’s not only about winning. We are not Munich, and we know how to suffer in some ways,” said sporting director Sebastian Kehl. And suffer they have, at times. For such a large crowd, it wears its emotions on its collective sleeve to the point that one can pretty easily see how such a crowd could turn a home advantage into a disadvantage in certain situations. One can also see how that might make the catastrophe of last season’s final matchday all the more devastating.
Last spring, Borussia Dortmund came back from nine points down to take the league lead into the final matchday of the season. All they had to do was beat midtable Mainz, or have Bayern drop points against Koln, to secure their first title in 11 years and end Bayern’s decade-long title streak. Instead, with star midfielder Jude Bellingham injured and missing his final game in black and yellow, BVB watched Mainz take a stunning 2-0 lead after 25 minutes. Sébastien Haller, as responsible as anyone for BVB’s spring surge, missed a penalty and in front of a panicked home crowd, BVB could manage only a 2-2 draw. They almost got bailed out by an equally shocking result in Koln, but Jamal Musiala‘s 89th-minute goal secured a 2-1 Bayern win and extended the Bavarians’ streak of league trophies.
How long he will remain “home” is up in the air. You can find plenty of German media outlets that insist Sancho should return on a full transfer this coming summer, but whether that’s in the realm of financial possibility remains to be seen. The same goes for Maatsen, who has a goal, two assists and a level of poise on the ball that has completely transformed BVB’s buildup play. He has a €40 million release clause from Chelsea this summer.
“Of course if I could buy a player, or if I could loan a player with a buy option, I would rather do it,” Kehl said. “But [with Sancho and Maatsen], it was unfortunately not possible. It was the only chance to get these players under these circumstances. For that reason, it’s like this, but we will follow them and of course do everything, perhaps if we have a chance [to acquire them permanently in the future].”
The success of the Sancho and Maatsen loan deals, the poor odds of both remaining with the club after May, the desperate race for a Champions League bid and the old age of the 2023-24 squad have all created a unique level of uncertainty for the club at the moment. It feels like the club has skewed off-course a bit. Then again, it might only feel that way because of injuries.
Karim Adeyemi, 22, was one of the major difference-makers in last year’s title push, but after a long spell on the sideline, he didn’t even top 1,000 minutes until mid-March. He was BVB’s best player in the team’s recent 2-0 win at Bayern, its first in Munich in a decade. Nmecha has shown value as a press-heavy box-to-box midfielder, but has managed only 1,097 minutes. Jamie Bynoe-Gittens, 19, is, like Sancho, a duels-hungry winger with major potential, but he’s played only 1,022 minutes, in which he’s scored twice with four assists.
Reyna, struggling for minutes on loan at Nottingham Forest after playing just 361 minutes for BVB this season, is somehow still only 21 years old. If he can ever get on the right side of both the injury bug and his manager at the same time, his recent national team performances were a pretty clear reminder of his upside. Youssoufa Moukoko, 19, has struggled for playing time this season behind Füllkrug and others up front, but he’s still scored four goals in 498 minutes.
Those five players could easily turn into major contributors for a great team in the future — others, like 25-year-old Donyell Malen (13 goals and three assists in all comps) and the 24-year-old Schlotterbeck have only recently entered their prime years, though Malen is rumored to be potentially departing this summer. BVB also hold the rights to 18-year-old forward Paris Brunner, the player of the tournament at least year’s U17 World Cup, and 18-year-old midfielder Kjell Watjen, who has combined 10 goals and eight assists for the club’s U19 team this season.
The highest upside of all might belong to 17-year-old winger Julien Duranville. Acquired from Anderlecht in January 2023, he nearly saved BVB’s title hopes in the final moments of the “s— day of the 27th of May,” creating two excellent scoring chances with eight progressive carries in a desperate 28-minute appearance against Mainz. He has missed almost all of 2023-24 with injury but recorded two assists in a U19 match on Sunday, one of his first matches of the season. “You will see him for sure in two years playing on a level you won’t believe,” Cramer said.
‘The more you are based in the market you are talking about, the more you will reach’
Even during a frustrating season, the brand-building never stops. On Feb. 29, BVB became the third German club (following Bayern Munich and Eintracht Frankfurt) to open an office in the United States, choosing a spot with longtime marketing partner Sport Five on New York’s Madison Avenue. “To be honest, if [COVID-19] wouldn’t have arrived, I’m sure we would have opened this office earlier,” Cramer said. “It was just a question of time.” The club has 32 fan clubs in the United States, along with 18 youth academies. “I think the learning from all our other international activities” — they also have offices in China and Singapore — “is that the more you are based in the market you are talking about, the more you will reach.
Acquired from Mallorca in 2019, Morey was just cracking the first team after some injuries when, in the 2021 DFB-Pokal semifinals, he suffered a serious knee injury that forced him out for more than a year. On Feb. 11, after more than 1,000 days with the club, he was finally able to play in front of, and celebrate with, the Yellow Wall.
“Mateu is our hidden hero,” Terzic said after the match. “He is here now for more than four years. Every player that we sign, we try to convince them by showing him this stadium, with 80,000 people in it. Mateu was here for four and a half years, and for three years now he has been doing his rehab to get back, and he never played in front of the spectators in our stadium. He worked so hard in the gym, and it was a very long way from the hospital to the pitch, and if you want a hero of the day it has to be Mateu Morey.”
Watching Morey finally getting a chance to share a moment with the home crowd was a special thing. And regardless of whether they will ever close the gap on soccer’s superpowers or sign the next Haaland, Borussia Dortmund will always have Signal Iduna Park and 81,000 family members to visit every few days.
