Dortmund need a culture change, not just a coaching one

“Winning is everything,” is a phrase you hear a lot from football fans, particularly those whose teams do actually win everything.

Speak to a Real Madrid or Chelsea fan, two teams who have steamrolled any chance of a footballing identity, giving managers time or not overspending in their pursuit of success, and they will tell you none of it matters, the only important thing is how many trophies are lined up for the team photo at the start of the following season.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are Borussia Dortmund. The second biggest team in Europe’s third-highest ranked league, and not a sniff of a league or Champions League title since Jurgen Klopp’s departure in 2015.

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The Petr Bosz/Ajax experiment failed, despite it so far succeeding at Leverkusen, and in Lucien Favre, the club essentially accepted their place on the pecking order well below Bayern Munich, more likely to sell their best player to the eight-time consecutive Bundesliga winners, than ever push them for the title.

In an interview earlier this year Director of Sales, Carsten Cramer was revealing, saying, “If we want to compete with Bayern Munich, we definitely will fail… we want to be about more than just winning and losing football matches.” 

That might sound nice, but being nice isn’t what wins you trophies, and for a team supposedly the second biggest in a huge league, that’s a problem.

It’s a problem when Leipzig, Leverkusen and Borussia Mönchengladbach are waiting in the wings to leapfrog Dortmund and past a below-par fatigued Bayern this season, and it’s a problem when BVB have done such a phenomenal job of marketing themselves, raising the club from one of the biggest teams in Germany to a global force.

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They’ve also had Marco Reus as a FIFA cover star, and remain one of the most used clubs on the game, on top of becoming a home for the next big talents in world football, capturing the likes of Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham with relative ease.

There’s plenty of positives, but the one negative is this lack of a desire to win, and as they make their decision as to who will take them forward in 2021 as their next head coach, it’s time to start prioritising winning trophies.

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A prodigy of Klopp, who he played alongside and was coached by at Mainz, Rose could well be the man to take Dortmund back to the level his friend and mentor, having continually excelled throughout his career.

Rose’s ability at Gladbach to take underachieving players to new heights has been a hallmark of his career, as has a rapid, vertical, attacking brand of football, both assets perfectly suited to Dortmund.

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If Dortmund are serious about Rose being the man to take them back to the top, they need to make sure they don’t set him up to fail. Do everything to keep those youngsters, and never allow a situation where Robert Lewandowski and Mario Gotze can leave on a free to happen ever again.

Things are changing quickly in German football, and fan and community-led clubs have bit hit harder than anyone. Miss this opportunity to come flying out of the pandemic, and Dortmund could soon be without their star players and prospective new manager, and back towards mediocrity.

Clubs like Real Madrid are rare examples, where winning at all costs really is everything, and as we saw with the Italian Calciopoli scandal in 2006, an ‘all costs’ mentality can often lead to grave consequences.

But for the supposedly second biggest team in Germany, with the best collection of young players in the game, nows the time to push on, or risk forever being in Bayern’s shadow.