Sports history is littered with underdogs.
Unfancied players, teams, and coaches that have managed to topple the natural order resonate with fans. They carry a special place in our hearts. The heights they scale are often unsustainable, and thus we remember them with a certain sense of nostalgia; a sense of “what could have been” had they benefitted from a more advantageous starting position.
Jurgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund is in danger of becoming a band of forgotten men. On first glance, that seems preposterous. After all, they recently toppled the mighty Bayern Munich in successive years (2010-11 and 2011-12) in the Bundesliga—something no team has done since, well, Dortmund, in 1994-95 and 1995-96.
The most recent pair of title successes came at a time when a host of German clubs were challenging Bayern on the domestic front almost every season. Wolfsburg, Stuttgart and Werder Bremen had all dared to dream in the decade beforehand. Those title winners were great teams, yes, but they were seen as “one off” seasons. None of them mounted a title challenge in the year following their success.
Dortmund bucked the trend and they did it in style, playing Klopp’s “Heavy Metal” football in the 85, 000 seat Signal Iduna Park.
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Dortmund’s successes engaged the romantic inside all of us. Yet with Bayern currently boasting a 17-point advantage, the Bundesliga is in danger of becoming a one-team league, and the romance with Dortmund is in danger of fading.
Another well-documented problem is that Dortmund hasn’t shown a capacity to keep their best players. Youth product Mario Gotze is plying his trade at Bayern and Robert Lewandowski is joining him there on a free transfer this summer. Klopp decided against selling Lewandowski last year when the club could have made a profit. For a team with Dortmund resources, it’s easy to see why that move might be questioned. With Marco Reus and Ilkay Gundogan being courted across the continent it feels like it’s only a matter of time before they end up plying their trade elsewhere, too.
Up until now, Klopp has shown an ability to plug the gaps. For Shinji Kagawa, see Reus and for Gotze, see Henrikh Mkhitaryan. And to his credit, Dortmund has reached an agreement with Hertha Berlin for Adrian Ramos as Lewandowski’s replacement.
This manager really must be something special then, huh?
Klopp’s ability to work miracles and orchestrate chaos (on the pitch) has won hearts and minds throughout his tenure. His passion, tactical awareness and man management skills are of the highest order. My Sportsnet colleague James Sharman recently wrote that there’s no reason for Klopp to leave, and while that’s true, any top club with a managerial vacancy will undoubtedly cast wanting eyes in his direction.
Top clubs also don’t have to retool their teams every summer. Imagine what Klopp could achieve with the same, settled core for a handful of years? The possibilities are tantalizing.
With Pep Guardiola’s Bayern looking like they will rule the Bundesliga for the foreseeable future it will take more than simply keeping their players for Dortmund to compete. The one knock on Dortmund in recent years has been a lack of depth. The taxing, high-octane style that Klopp employs is thrilling to watch but it’s also left his players pretty susceptible to injuries. Simply put, it’s a playing style that requires a lot of depth.
Their starting 11 has been good enough to compete with any team in the world but the drop off in quality between Lewandowski and Julian Schieber, for example, is stark. It’s yet another issue that needs addressing in what is shaping up to be a pivotal summer in the Ruhr.
Despite being a traditionally strong force, Dortmund was driven to the brink of bankruptcy in 2005. Their return to the limelight has won the hearts and minds of neutrals, but staying in the limelight is a completely different task.
Dortmund has the raw materials to make the latter happen. Let’s run down the list. Do they have a stadium crisis on their hands? Well, their stadium is a modern, world class facility that operates 100 percent on green energy. With the second-highest attendance in Europe, the Signal Iduna Park is a sustainable home.
Reus and Gundogan haven’t left and players such as Mats Hummels, Roman Weidenfeller, Sven Bender, Jakub Błaszczykowski and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang are no slouches themselves.
Think fine-tuning instead of rebuilding. With the biggest ground in the country, a host of world class players and a top manager, this could very well be Dortmund ‘s window of opportunity to consolidate their place at the top table.
In an interview with the Guardian last year, Klopp was asked about how he gets his club to compete with their mega-rich rivals.
“The important thing is new ideas, not money,” he said. “It is important to make the next step. You always want to be the team that can beat the one with more money.”
This summer will be crucial if the underdogs want to take that next step.
Sasha Kalra is a Toronto-based writer. Follow him on Twitter