Do Dortmund exist to win league titles or sell players? It's getting harder and harder to tell
Borussia Dortmund fans can pick two individual moments to highlight as the reason why their side lost 2-0 to Union Berlin on Sunday. The first was a slip from Gregor Kobel in the eighth minute of the game, which allowed the ball to fall into the path of Janik Haberer with an empty goal in front of him. The second came just 13 minutes later when Karim Adeyemi tried an audacious back heel on the halfway line, which instead set up the hosts to counter attack and score a second before most home fans had even had a chance to finish their first beer.
Of course, it would be a little harsh to blame Sunday’s result - which has Dortmund sitting eighth in the Bundesliga table following their worst start to a league campaign since 2014/15 - entirely on a single player. But out of the two aforementioned moments, the second is just so enticingly appropriate as an allegory of Dortmund’s seemingly never-ending failures on the pitch over the past 10 years.
This isn’t another newsletter about Dortmund’s struggles under Edin Terzic. I did that last week, with a clear warning that things didn’t seem to be improving under the novice head coach. Instead, the team’s ability to plunge to depths not seen since Jürgen Klopp’s final and famously chaotic season at the club forces us to point the finger at the men above Terzic, who continue to make far bigger mistakes than playing Niklas Sule at right back.
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