Finally, after a week, like a month, Borussia Dortmund has taken its next steps.
Niko Kovac has been appointed head coach until 2026 and is charged with leading an ailing team — 11th in the Bundesliga — back up the table towards the Champions League qualification places.
The eight days since Nuri Sahin was dismissed have been so fraught because there was little certainty over what the club’s next steps would be.
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Kovac, 53, made the impression as a target from the start. Roger Schmidt is also on the list, but he’s taking a break from training. It has never been more than embryonic and there is no indication that meditation has entertained and will not be offered.
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 parties agreed with a contract of 18 months until 2026, without a break in the summer. And by replacement of Sahin, Kovac is a game 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, because the main task is to make this team more realistic in its stylistic goals.
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, born locally and also a fan. Lars Rickn and Sebastian Kehl, CEO of Sport and Sporting Director, respectively, are also former players.
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Kovac is an outsider. And, at this moment, it is an argument for sale.
The demanding situations he faces are substantial, since he does not reach a harmonious club. Dortmund’s political machinations developed in public. Rickn and Kehl don’t like the simplest relationship. There are also tensions between Kehl and Sven Mislintat, the former Scout Chief who returned to the club as a technical director in the summer of 2024, the two do not agree with the movement objectives.
The deterioration of its appointments even has a meme, in which online enthusiasts constitute increasingly absurd tactics in which the two glin. This week: Mallintat poured salt instead of sugar at the Kehl coffee.
There has been a more serious distraction in the media, too. Matthias Sammer, one of the great players in Dortmund’s history, is employed by the club as a consultant. He also works as a pundit on German television, including coverage of BVB’s Champions League games, during which — most recently after the defeat by Bologna — he has been openly critical of performances.
In recent days, he will have to have agreed that Sammer will no longer flinch at Dortmund’s 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 want a left-back, a centre-back canopy and, with Felix Nmecha, suffering an injury last week that will likely keep him out for the rest of the season, another midfielder as well. In Wolfsburg as a canopy, however, it is by no means a comparison replacement.
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And yet Dortmund are not optimistic about making any additions. “It could be that we do nothing at all,” Kehl told DAZN on Wednesday night after the victory over Shakhtar Donetsk.
The diversity of disorders in the picture also wants attention.
The victory over Shakhtar was Dortmund’s first in any competition in 2025. A 3-1 win assured them a place in the Champions League play-off round, where they will play either Sporting CP or Club Brugge next month, and proved a tonic for supporters. But the goal they conceded — which saw goalkeeper Gregor Kobel tackled when on the ball inside his own six-yard box — felt broadly typical of their clunky mechanics.
Sahin searched after Dortmund to collect as a press resistant press, attracting the opposition to them before cutting and progressing in the resulting space. This is an intelligent goal, however, this team, and specifically this organization of defensive players, did not have the mandatory confidence to play in this way.
Pressure continuously made them look uncomfortable, causing mistakes that changed the course of games.
Sahin also sought that Dortmund was a dominant aspect of the ball and controls the speed of the game before flooding the third defender of his opposition to attack numbers. It rarely worked. In fact, the technique has served to accentuate its defects, expanding its vulnerability as a result of billing. It was surprising, for example, how Dortmund advanced at low speed, just for the ball to return to them faster once it was lost and invariably open speers.
There were times when the technique was: the massive functionality opposed to Celtic, for example, or this roar backed on 4 objectives opposite to Bochum in autumn, but more frequently, they looked like a team that fired little strength from its structure.
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Sahin was unlucky to suffer so much absence when his paints were under pressure, however, his team has shown an alarming inability to deal with direct football. Long bullets in the channels or over the defense have been reliably effective against them, as have quick vertical passes or midfield runs.
Even in January, in the opposite matches to Bayer Leverkusen, Holstein Kiel, Bologna and Frankfurt, there were innumerable examples of possibilities (and goals) resulting from such conditions and Dortmund unlocked through a rudimentary game.
Kovac deserves to be a for this. Those who do not forget your Frankfurt team winner of DFB -Pokal (2018) do not forget an inflexible defensive team: they admitted the greatest objectives in the Bundesliga this season, which countered with wonderful speed and impact.
Offensive and technically, this Dortmund team is more talent. There are more that can be done. However, its maximum pressing desire is a much more forged and more reliable base. Kovac is strict in this area. Robert Kovac, his assistant teacher and brother, is a former central defender. Among them, they will be special about the positioning, the defense of the sets and the role of the Dortmund player 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.
Subliminally, Ricken made reference to that character shortfall when announcing Kovac’s appointment on Thursday.
“The energy, determination and a sense of the importance of team spirit have prominent teams from Niko,” he said. “We need to feel it and see it all and off the field. “
Commitment to the team is a non-negotiable kovac at times in his career, Kovac challenged the players who, in his opinion, did not settle for the collective goal. In Wolfsburg, he once kidnapped Omar Marmoush 20 minutes after bringing him in as a substitute, telling the Egyptian that he wasn’t playing in a way that would benefit the team as a whole.
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So this is no shrinking violet. He has fallen out with players before, too. Most famously when he reduced Thomas Muller’s game time at Bayern Munich with selection decisions that — today — he admits were a mistake.
Challenge Muller in Bavaria an ambitious decision. An imprudent, maybe. But Dortmund wishes.
Sahin paid the price for the team’s form over the past seven months and, in hindsight, he was both a naive appointment and too inexperienced for the task he was given. But that should not distract from the players’ culpability. Particularly some of the senior internationals, who did not maintain a standard of performance that was anything close to good enough and for whom the attention directed towards Sahin and the club’s politics was highly convenient.
These policies rumble. But in the field, Kovac will dispute this lack of responsibility. His intolerance for this can create new enemies, however, it is a time for hard truths in Borussia Dortmund.
(Top photo: Swen Pförtner/Picture Alliance Getty Images)