Borussia Dortmund fired Nuri Sahin: What went wrong? Do the Bundesliga giants really need a ‘Boy from Dortmund’? | Football news
There is an obvious contradiction at the heart of Borussia Dortmund. BVB’s brand, the yellow and black that is popular all over the world, is built on the idea that this super club, a June finalist in the Champions League, is a little different from its rivals.
80,000 fans inside the Westfalenstadion, 25,000 crammed into that huge grandstand at the south end of the stadium, make a unique sound and story. Football as it should be, as the Bundesliga spiel says. They don’t buy superstars here, they build them.
Part of defining Dortmund also refers to what they are not. Talk to people inside the club and they will say they want to be as big as possible, but not Bayern Munich. Dortmund is huge. But the message is that they are family too. You have to get it.
This has informed their recent coaching appointments. Edin Terzić had a convincing story. He stood on the Yellow Wall as a boy before leading the club to the brink of a first Bundesliga triumph in a decade and, of course, that trip to Wembley last season.
When both Terzić and Dortmund were forced to admit that he may be missing that little bit to complete the job, the club did not turn to a super coach for a super club but – again – to one of its own. Former player and home boy Nuri Sahin took over.
Sahin is a Dortmund man and that is a big asset in this part of the Ruhr region. Talking to him shortly after his return to Dortmund, he explained it emotionally. “I listened to my heart and my heart said that the club needs you, so come back and help the club.”
If it wasn’t for the fact that his name was already woven into Dortmund’s history, through two spells as a player, his time leading Turkish club Antalyaspor probably wouldn’t be convincing enough to ask him.
Sahin, who initially returned as Terzic’s assistant, is an unusually bright person and a keen student of the game. But adjusting to taking over the top job at the European giant proved difficult. It leaves them languishing in the bottom half of the Bundesliga table.
Four successive defeats in January underlined the slide, the second of which was a defeat at then-bottom club Holsten Kiel in which Dortmund were three down at the break and conceded fourth even after their lowly opponents were reduced to 10th.
This is not all about Sahin. The high-tempo brand of football that Dortmund were known for is now not so clear. Even the recruitment strategy has become less defined. Against St Pauli in October, the average age of the starting line-up was almost 29 years old.
But Dortmund have won just once in nine Bundesliga away games, look hopelessly disjointed and have made a string of mistakes after mistakes. Faith in Sahin has evaporated with attempts to limp by talking about the long term becoming unsustainable. The defeat in Bologna on Tuesday proved too much.
Is it time to rethink the whole strategy? During a visit to the city earlier this season, it was an obvious question to ask managing director Carsten Cramer. It was dangerous for me to speak a thought in their offices, but do you really need to be a guy from Dortmund?
After all, this is a club that has only won the Champions League once, their defining moment in 1997, and that triumph came under Ottmar Hitzfeld, a German who was born on the Swiss border, playing and coaching in Switzerland for most of his career. life.
His only German team as a player was VfB Stuttgart. Their other great coach, Jurgen Klopp, is a Swabian, who worked for a long time with Mainz, not Dortmund, before leading the club to back-to-back titles and even coming to embody the club’s spirit.
If the two greatest coaches in Dortmund’s history are both outsiders who raised the club’s prestige and mystique like no local coach before or since, then why did Cramer and his team fixate on coaches who only get Dortmund, not shape it?
“That’s a good question,” Cramer said Sky Sports.
“Ottmar Hitzfeld was not engaged and Jurgen Klopp was not engaged because they they weren’t from Dortmund. I would say we looked for the best guys that were available in that situation and we decided to take Hitzfeld and then we decided to take Klopp.
“Now we have a different time and, yes, it is more than just a coincidence that Nuri Sahin’s Dortmund lad, Lars Ricken [sporting CEO] is a guy from Dortmund and at least Sebastian Kehl [sporting director] as. I’d say it suits us right now.”
Cramer added: “We are very happy to have Dortmund boys, but it is not a strategy to only hire Dortmund boys. Lars will explain to you, the guy who runs the youth department has never played for Dortmund and it was Lars who invited him to work for Dortmund.
“Nuri Sahin’s assistant coach, there is Lukasz [Piszczek] of course, but the others come from other places. So that’s something that’s good to have, but it’s not a clear request from the club that we just need to take the guys from Dortmund.”
But the guiding principle is commendable. Dortmund should never be a stepping stone. “We believe that continuity and commitment to this club is a great advantage in the current times, and not to see the club as a step in your career to move forward as soon as possible.”
Cramer added: “Nothing is being done because we complain about the previous approach, but we know that Dortmund’s mentality is very special and the greater the identification with the club, the more comfortable we feel with it.”
He expects an answer. Comfortable? Is that really the goal here. “I would say, let’s see,” he admits. “Come back in two, three or four years, ask me the question again and I hope I’m right. And if not, I have to say you asked the right question.”
That question was asked two months ago, not two years ago. But Dortmund were forced to turn around. Culture is made up of many things and is obviously important. Then again, this is certainly not about someone’s past but about their future. Maybe Dortmund need to start looking for their own.
