Finally, after a week, like a month, Borussia Dortmund has taken his next measures.
Niko Kovac appointed the main coach until 2026 and is accused of having led a poor health team, 11 in the Bundesliga, back to the qualification of the Champions League.
The 8 days since Nuri Sahin rejected so heavy because there is little certainty in the next steps of the club.
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Kovac, 53, made an early impression as a target. Roger Schmidt, also on the limited list, still took a break from training. Ralf Rangnick has some other target, but it will not be offered or rejected, and no deal ever seemed realistic. Stuttgart’s Sébastien also discussed internally, however, the interest has never been more than embryonic and there is no indication that the capital would have entertained a bid.
Initially, Dortmund intended to appoint an interim coach until the end of the season. That proved a sticking point for Kovac, who was not keen on a short-term contract. With BVB participating in this summer’s Club World Cup, he was not willing to be unavailable during June and July, when other job opportunities might have arisen.
In the end, the two sides agreed to an 18-month contract until 2026, with no break in the summer. And by replacing Sahin, Kovac is a departure for the club.
He has not played for Dortmund or, in tactical terms, does not pontificate his type of football. It is more pragmatic. He puts more emphasis on defense. It resulted in other tactics of his career, for Eintracht Frankfurt, Bayern Munich, Monaco, Wolfsburg and with the national team of Croatia, however, his technique has never made him an apparent candidate for this work.
This can be an advantage, since the main task is to make this team more realistic in its stylistic objectives.
Jurgen Klopp has left BVB for almost 10 years, but the club still pursues the football ideals he left. It is detriment. Dortmund should be what they were: powerful, dynamic, more powerful than the sum of their parts. But the more they review to resume this moment in time, the more they seem to go.
BVB once the European Formula team: a strange ending, in a way. Today, they behave well under them (they have the moment when the salary expense in the Bundesliga) have a cut of higher level players and cannot shake a paralyzing habit of making avoidable mistakes.
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And yet they retain a fascinating faith in their own culture.
Sahin played for the club and grew up supporting them. Edin Terzic, his predecessor, was born locally and also a fan. Lars Ricken and Sebastian Kehl, the CEO of Sport and Sporting Director, respectively, are also former players.
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Kovac is a stranger. And, at present, this is an argument of the sale.
The challenges he faces are substantial, though, because he is not arriving at a harmonious club. Dortmund’s political machinations have often played out in public. Ricken and Kehl do not enjoy the easiest relationship. There is also tension between Kehl and Sven Mislintat, the former chief scout who returned to the club as a technical director in the summer of 2024, with the two frequently disagreeing over transfer targets.
The deterioration of their dating even has a meme, in which online enthusiasts constitute increasingly absurd tactics in which the two glinios. This week: Mallintat poured salt instead of sugar into Kehl coffee.
There has also been a more serious distraction in the media. In which, most recently after the defeat through Bologna, he criticized the performances.
In recent days, it has had to be agreed that Sammer will no longer cover Dortmund games.
Therefore, the climate has its challenges. With 4 days before the movement window closes, there are also practical wishes that will also need to be addressed.
Dortmund wants a return to the left, a central defense policy and, with Felix Nmecha, suffering an injury last week that will keep him away by the rest of the season, also an additional midfielder. Salih Ozan has been withdrawn from his loan to Wolfsburg as a cover, but it is not a comparative replacement.
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And yet, Dortmund is not positive when making additions. “We do nothing at all,” Kehl told Dazn on Wednesday night after the victory over Shakhtar Donetsk.
The diversity of disorders in the painting also wants attention.
The victory over the Shakhtar, the first of Dortmund at any festival in 2025. A 3-1 victory is confident that it gives them a position in the circular of the Champions League dam, where the sports CP or the Brugge Club El El Next month, and turned to be a tonic for followers. But the goal they granted, which saw goalkeeper Gregor Kobel attacks when he is on the internal ball of his own box of six meters, felt in large part typical of his clumsy mechanisms.
Sahin wanted Dortmund to build-up like a press-resistant side, drawing the opposition towards them before cutting through and advancing into the resulting space. That is a fine aim, but this team — and specifically that group of defensive players — often lacked the confidence to play that way.
Pressure continuously made them look uncomfortable, causing mistakes that changed the course of games.
Sahin also sought that Dortmund was a dominant team with the ball and controls the speed of the matches before flooding the third defensive of his opponent with offensive figures. It rarely worked. In fact, the technique has been used to accentuate its failures, expanding its vulnerability after reversals. It was surprising, for example, to see how many times Dortmund advanced at low speed, so that the ball returns more temporarily once it had been lost and invariably out of the doors and in Giant Speedas.
There were times when the technique was – the massive functionality opposed to Celtic, for example, or this roaring go back of 4 aims opposed to Bochum in the fall – yet more often, they looked like a team that fired little force of their structure.
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Sahin had a bad luck of suffering so much absence when his paintings were under pressure, however, his team has shown an alarming inability to deal with direct football. Long bullets in the channels or above the defense have been reliably effective to them, as well as the rapid vertical passes or races in the center of the field.
Even just in January, in games against Bayer Leverkusen, Holstein Kiel, Bologna and Frankfurt, there were countless examples of chances (and goals) arising from such situations and Dortmund being unlocked by rudimentary play.
Kovac should be a remedy for that. Those who remember his DFB-Pokal-winning Frankfurt team (2018) will recall a defensively rigid side — they conceded the fifth-fewest goals in the Bundesliga that season — that countered with great speed and impact.
Offensively and technically, this Dortmund team is more talented. There is more that can be done. However, his ultimate pressing desire is a much more forged and more reliable foundation. Kovac is strict in this area. Robert Kovac, his teacher and assistant brother, is a former central defender. Among them, they will be special about positioning, defending the sets and the role of the Dortmund player who does not have the ball.
This component of the season is busy and there is not much option for training. However, expect it to get weighed down towards the paintings off the property and make a lot of Dortmund, much more complicated to beat.
But as obvious as some of those weaknesses are, there is a suggestion too that this team is emotionally flimsy; that they lack leadership and, more damningly, courage when they play away from home. It is a fair charge. Dortmund have won just one Bundesliga game away from the Westfalenstadion all season.
Undiminently, Ricken referred to this lack of nature by pronouncing Kovac’s appointment on Thursday.
“Energy, determination and a sense of the importance of the team spirit have always distinguished Niko’s teams,” he said. “We want to feel and see all of this on and off the pitch.”
The commitment to the team is a non -negotiable Kovac. Sometimes in his career, Kovac challenged the players who, according to him, did not settle for the collective objective. In Wolfsburg, he once got rid of Omar Marmush 20 minutes after bringing him as a substitute, telling Egyptian that he did not play in a way that benefited the team in general.
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It is not reducing purple. He also fell with players. More noted when he reduced Thomas Muller’s game time to Bayern Munich with variety decisions that, today, admits an error.
Challenge Muller in Bavaria an ambitious decision. An imprudent, maybe. But Dortmund wishes.
Sahin has paid the value of the team’s form in the past seven months and, in hindsight, it was a naïve assembly and too green for the task given. But that doesn’t distract from the players’ guilt. Specifically, some of the senior internationals, who didn’t have a popular functionality that was smart enough and for whom the attention directed at Sahin and the club’s policy was very practical.
Those politics rumble on. But on the pitch, Kovac will challenge that lack of accountability. His intolerance for it might create some new enemies, but it really is a time for hard truths at Borussia Dortmund.
(Superior photo: Swen Pförtner / Picture Alliance Getty Images)