In our “Green Space” column, Oliver Fritsch, Christof Siemes, Stephan Reich and Anna Kemper take turns writing about the world of football and the world of football. This article is part of ZEIT am Wochenend, issue 44/2024.
I would really be interested to know how many people in the country still look back longingly on their great love from school years and decades after they have finished school. That one, magical, exciting love back then that made life seem so easy, the smooching session on the school trip, the holding of hands on a morning after the graduation party when the future lay brightly before you, the general lightness of being at someone’s side , with which you felt all of this for the first time. But then real life began, or at least its proverbial seriousness, and as it happens, we separated, lost sight of each other, and went our separate ways. And the longing remained.
Which brings us to Borussia Dortmund. Since Jürgen Klopp‘s departure, BVB has seemed like a club in collective heartbreak. An emotionally restless, erratic club that is attached to its old love and has become completely unable to enter into a new relationship. Thomas Tuchel, Peter Bosz, Lucien Favre, Marco Rose – all great guys, but they never got serious with them, who always remained just affairs, who, after a year, got their toothbrush out of the bathroom in exasperation and disappeared again, worn out in a toxic relationship , in which the other person refused to take the ex’s photos off the counter.
Nuri Şahin is currently on the sidelines, still, one might think, a native of Dortmund, like his predecessor Edin Terzić. They are both revenants of Klopp, variations if you will, emotional types with the smell of a stable and “BVB gene”, as it was called in Şahin’s introduction, emotional methadone for the fans who long for the Klopp years. Terzić once sang a few chants in the gym, and you can imagine him languishing with his guitar under the BVB window, where he is Wonder wall
plays. It was of no use.
Because it won’t be quite like it used to be. Oh, Jürgen, you think of BVB in the evening at the lonely DAB at the counter, where he sits restless and at a loss, caught in the middle of the table by his own feelings, Matthias Reim from the speakers, the question in his head as to why that happened with Jürgen back then broke up so stupidly and now you go from affair to affair, one-season stands, do it again, even though you should actually be somewhere else in life, damn it, family, children, a championship or something like that, and then the wasted thing Champions League final, it’s somehow stuck, and somehow it started to get stuck back then, what a mess, if only you could turn back time, man, Jürgen, it was nice back then, wasn’t it? Do you still think about us sometimes?
That’s what coaches in Dortmund have to measure themselves against, even in 2024, nine years after Klopp’s departure. Who, by the way, returned briefly a few weeks ago. “That’s what I’ve always dreamed of, that at some point in life you’ll meet again and then just have a good time together,” said Klopp as he spent a day at the Westfalenstadion for the farewell game for Łukasz Piszczek and Jakub Błaszczykowski. Sounds painfully like: Let’s stay friends. In the stands you could see fans with “Thank you Kloppo” scarves. A few months earlier, in April, there had been a huge choreography in the same place, in which a larger than life Jurgen Klopp
triumphantly raised his fist over the south stand.
Dortmund are currently seventh in the league under Şahin and have just been eliminated from the cup. So the next Klopp successor is on the horizon. Terzić was already met with astonishing ridicule, and those around BVB seemed almost cynical at times. But how can there ever be peace in Dortmund when every new person is still in the shadow of their great love from back then?
Klopp’s move to Red Bull could have at least one good thing: the man has disenchanted himself with a stroke of his hand. His successes with Dortmund will not diminish his commitment to RB, but the fans’ view of him will change. And that could have something healing: as if you were seeing your great love from back then and there is nothing magical or exciting about it anymore, it is just a human being and you realize that it is more of a symbol of a carefree time missed, but it’s just over.
Maybe this will give you the insight that you need to get involved with someone new, that a new love takes time and that a functioning relationship is always work. And that you also have to work on yourself, for example on the notoriously inadequate squad planning, or the many, many injuries that we have to complain about every season. Everything that is holding BVB back. Will that happen? Love is rarely rational, and football certainly isn’t.
In our “Green Space” column, Oliver Fritsch, Christof Siemes, Stephan Reich and Anna Kemper take turns writing about the world of football and the world of football. This article is part of ZEIT am Wochenend, issue 44/2024.
I would really be interested to know how many people in the country still look back longingly on their great love from school years and decades after they have finished school. That one, magical, exciting love back then that made life seem so easy, the smooching session on the school trip, the holding of hands on a morning after the graduation party when the future lay brightly before you, the general lightness of being at someone’s side , with which you felt all of this for the first time. But then real life began, or at least its proverbial seriousness, and as it happens, we separated, lost sight of each other, and went our separate ways. And the longing remained.
