Dortmund’s Swiss manager Lucien Favre
Photo: BVB.de
How does Dortmund’s start compare to their title wining years?
by Brandon Prangell
German giants Borussia Dortmund have won five Bundesliga titles, and look on a steady course to add a sixth to their collection. With loan striker Paco Alcacer re-finding his shooting boots netting seven in four games for BVB, the team is flying high.
This effort has been helped with poor form of others around them. Out of the top three from last season, Bayern Munich are the highest in sixth. With Munich struggling under new manager Niko Kovač, Dortmund are thriving under Lucien Favre.
In the 2010-11 season, their first title-winning campaign under Jurgen Klopp, ‘die Schwarzgelben’ had played eight matches by this time in the footballing calendar and they’d achieved seven wins in a row after losing 2-0 at home to Bayern Leverkusen on the opening day.
This would mean they had 21 points compared to the 17 they have under Favre, drawing two of their matches, a 0-0 draw away to Hannover and a 1-1 draw away to last season’s third-placed side Hoffenheim.
In the 2010-2011 season, Klopp would line his side up in a 4-2-3-1 formation which would be the way he would maintain it during his tenure as boss of the Ruhrgebiet side.
The defence was rock solid. Mats Hummels and Neven Subotic’s partnership being crucial to the side’s success as they conceded 22 goals all season along with the hard-working captain Sebastien Kehl interceptions being crucial turning defence into attack.
Following the successes of the season before, Dortmund went out and added İlkay Gündoğan to the talented number of the stars they had, including Robert Lewandowski who’d joined from Lech Poznan the season before and scored nine in his break-out season. He would more than triple this achievement in 2011-2012.
They were much worse at the start of their second title-winning season though they’d played nine matches. In that time, they lost three matches, drawn one and won the rest and had only taken 16 points which isn’t too dissimilar to the side’s current tally while playing two matches less.
Goal scoring has been a strong point for the Dortmund club this season with their 23 goals being superior to their 20 goals that they had in 2010-2011. At this time in the season this was their highest scoring tally, in the two seasons they won the title.
Current manager Favre’s tactics are very different to Dortmund’s former employer as he opts for a defensive take on the 4-3-3 formation, having two holding midfielders with Belgian Axel Witsel being a mainstay in the team, while Julian Weigl, Mahmoud Dahoud and Thomas Delaney have been swapped around as his partner.
This line-up is doing even better when you consider Englishman Jadon Sancho and Spanish striker Alcacer have mainly been coming off the bench when fatigue starts to set in. Sancho has six assists and Valencia-born Alcacer has six goals both topping their respective charts.
Since the 2010-2011 title triumph, Dortmund have seen as many as five managers including their current manager. Austrian Peter Stöger, Dutch Peter Bosz and Thomas Tuchel have all failed to bring the title back to Signal Iduna Park.
Belgium’s Axel Witsel has gained a regular midfield starting place
Photo: BVB.de
Winning a title has been hard for these managers, Klopp could deal with the pressure of competing when their best players were leaving to join rivals and current Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich.
Since winning the titles, Lewandowski, Hummels and Mario Gotze have all swapped yellow and black for the red of Bayern, though Gotze did come back after struggling to fit into Bayern.
Other important names that have left are Henrikh Mkhitaryan, İlkay Gündoğan, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, and Shinji Kagawa though the former is now back at the club.
Dortmund have a very different approach to what other clubs in their league do, as they base a lot of their success on younger players or by signing players that were not favoured by their clubs and bringing them to Germany and training them into stars.
The latest players to be brought in to match the project are Marius Wolf and Abdou Diallo, Wolf joined from Frankfurt while Diallo joined from 1.FSV Mainz 05 after being a victim of circumstances at AS Monaco another side who put faith in youth.
Diallo has featured six times, while Wolf has played four times. It is Sancho who has been at the club since August 2017 that has been the most pleasing though. The Englishman was one of the main young poster boys for Manchester City’s academy along with the likes of Phil Foden and Brahim Diaz.
Since moving to Germany, the winger has put in an impressive shift scoring two goals and getting 12 assists, eight of those assists have come this season. It looks likely that Dortmund may have found their latest star to lead their team forward. He’s alongside American Christian Pulisic and Raphaël Guerreiro as a younger breakthrough star.
Though it is only early in the season Dortmund look on course to be a hit this season though the big question is whether they will be able to maintain their current form.
If they even come close to that they could be looking at a very welcome sixth title.
