BVB in crisis: Why coach Sahin’s dismissal came so late

How complicated things are at Borussia Dortmund was evident on Tuesday evening in Bologna’s Stadio Renato Dall’Ara. Matthias Sammer crouched at a bar table on the sidelines, his black Smurf hat pulled low over his face, and talked about Dortmund’s 2-1 defeat against Bologna.

But which Sammer was there? Sammer, the expert paid by the pay-TV channel Amazon? Sammer, the consultant paid by BVB? Sammer, the private citizen? Or all three at the same time?

Difficult. Things got even more confusing when Lars Ricken came to the bar table. Ricken is the sports director at Borussia Dortmund and would have been questioned hard by Sammer (in the role of expert and also advisor) after the defeat against Bologna. But that didn’t happen, because somehow Ricken is also a friend of Sammer’s. Together they won the Champions League with BVB in 1997, and which Borussia player doesn’t remember Ricken’s magical goal in the final against Juventus Turin, this arc lamp ball, shot at full speed?

Sammer and Ricken are both ranked as so-called legends at BVB. Things are very polite and calm in this caste – who would dare to mess with another club hero? Can only damage your own reputation.

The problem at Borussia Dortmund is that the management team consists largely of heroes of the past. Everyone has a story with everyone else, and that makes it difficult to make necessary personnel decisions – friendship is always at stake.

This is one of the reasons why it took a painfully long time before the club decided to give coach Nuri Şahin a leave of absence. A cut that Dortmund should have made weeks ago – it was obvious that Şahin was overwhelmed with rebuilding the team after the end of the Terzic era. But they let Şahin have his way, after all, he is also a big name in Dortmund, a player of the so-called Golden Generation, which won the championship and cup under Jürgen Klopp. Şahin kept getting new opportunities until a series of four defeats in a row (the last time that happened at BVB 25 years ago) and a fall to tenth place in the table forced the club officials to take action.

Under the leadership of Hans-Joachim Watzke, BVB has transformed into a romantic football company in recent years. Watzke’s dream is that the club is staffed at all levels with black and yellow players who have achieved great things on the pitch for BVB at some point. The club as a family, that’s what Watzke wants.

Watzke could have seen how dangerous this could be when looking at their rivals Bayern Munich. A few years ago, Uli Hoeneß and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge were also driven by the idea that only experienced Bayern professionals could lead the club. The experiment with Oliver Kahn as chairman and Hasan Salihamidzic as sports director failed spectacularly, and the club is still suffering from the long-term consequences of this unfortunate era today. Kahn and Salihamidzic paid absurdly high salaries to some players – the players, incidentally, who they believed were Bayern legends and needed to be kept. Kahn and Salihamidzic’s romantic overtures cost the club a sum in the high double-digit millions.

It will now be interesting to see whether the people of Dortmund have learned – if not from Munich’s history – at least from the Şahin case. Whether they continue to insist that the club can only renew itself from within itself or whether they allow influence and ideas from outside. Whether they bring new heads into the management team, people who don’t have a black and yellow CV – and for whom this is seen as a strength and not as a flaw.