BVB in the Champions League final: How did we get here?

OPINION

The season was actually already over on September 19, 2023. 58th minute in the Parc des Princes in Paris. First group game of the new Champions League season. Achraf Hakimi stroked the ball past BVB keeper Gregor Kobel with the outside of his foot. Ko in the first game, that much was clear.

My brother probably wouldn’t have thought on that September evening that nine months later he would have to have the TV on at his birthday party because our team is in the final. But on Saturday it will be like that. Claudia Neumann instead of Stevie Wonder from the speakers. Happy birthday to you! This game, a gift as a risky investment.

BVB in the final: This can only be a mistake of fate, right?

Even though we haven’t seen each other for a few weeks, we probably won’t talk much. Instead, we’ll look at the TV together. We’ll toast with beer without making eye contact, because we could miss something in that half second. A pass, a sliding tackle, a shot of the black and yellow invasion of London.

Training campfire moments for the hopefully big games of the European Championship in a few weeks. Only my mother will pour water into the wine. “They’ll lose anyway.” That’s what she always says when she wants to annoy us. And even if this woman has no football knowledge at all, she should actually be right. Suddenly the final. Suddenly Wembley. How the hell did we get here? This can only be a mistake of fate.

Nobody expected to make it to the round of 16. But it really should have been over by the quarter-finals at the latest. You can’t always be lucky, that’s what we heard back then. Yes, BVB were lucky. The posts and crossbar became our best friends. Against Newcastle, and later against Atletico and Paris. When it was all too late, when even Kobel couldn’t prevent the goal, there stood this metal comrade, winking at all the football experts.

“Luck is with the fools!”, the BVB fans laughed and toasted the victory again and again. Like the bumblebee, which is actually too heavy to fly – but doesn’t know that and therefore makes it easy anyway – Borussia stormed through Europe. We drowned the frustration of the disappointing Bundesliga season in lavish European Cup evenings.

BVB is like the bumblebee that doesn’t know that it can’t actually fly

When the floodlights came on and the Champions League anthem rang out, there was a different team on the pitch. A team that was clearly playing above its means, that really shouldn’t be where it is: in the biggest game in European club football. We won’t stand a chance against Real. Really not. Like the bumblebee, the team has flown higher than is actually possible. And like the bumblebee, the team doesn’t know that it’s not actually good enough for the final at Wembley. It won’t have a chance. And that’s exactly what it can use.

I’ll be sitting next to my brother on the sofa on Saturday. And even though it’s his special day, I wouldn’t complain if he has to share it with BVB this year. In any case, his birthday would then be marked in black and yellow in the diary for eternity.