Borussia Dortmund: History of JA?rgen Klopp's BVB Project

Borussia DortmundAi??are the new darlings of the football world. For most neutrals and non-Bayern Munich supporters, it is the team they want to see lift the Champions League trophy on May 25, 2013 at Wembley.

This is the story of a club on the verge of bankruptcy that decided to learn from its mistakes and do things the right way. It is the story of a progressive, unorthodox but tactically-intelligent and constantly-evolving manager with an endearing wry sense of humour and the patience and desire to work towards a collective dream. Something that he dubs the “most interesting football project in the world.”

JA?rgen Klopp’s Dortmund projectAi??

When Dortmund appointed the youthful and enthusiastic JA?rgen Klopp in 2008 from Mainz, his expertise as a coach was already respected to some degree. After finishing his playing career for Mainz 05, Klopp was their manager for seven years which included a debut appearance in the Bundesliga and the 2005-06 UEFA Cup qualification. And Dortmund were in need of saving, going through one of their worst periods that saw them approach rock bottom bankruptcy in 2005.

The club management had been responsible for this situation after Dortmund’s Bundesliga titles in 1995 and 1996 followed by their only Champions League trophy in 1997 when they beat Juventus in the final. This success fuelled a desire to compete with the bigger clubs, leading to huge loans and lavish spending on players and salaries. All of this collapsed between 2003-2005 when debts of around A?125 million forced them to sell the naming rights to Signal Iduna Park (or Westfalenstadion as it is originally known), and players like Tomas Rosicky were sold among many others to balance the books.

Klopp brought along not only experienced centre-back Neven Subotic and talented winger Kevin Grosskreutz, but also his technical and tactical acumen and the patience required to rebuild a team to more than its previous greatness. The management had realised the folly of their excess spending and worked on an entire restructuring of the club’s policies. Working together with Klopp, they devised a long-term stability self-sustainable model that encouraged youth development, provided enough opportunities for players from their academy to get in to the first team and gave the power back to the fans.

“It was the edge of the cliff, you couldn’t get any closer … Our main philosophy is that we will never again go one euro into debt for a transfer. We will live within our means. We can do anything but we need to have earned the money first,” saidAi??Dortmund chief executive Hans-Joachim Watzke.

By going back to basics and honouring the ownership model currently followed by 33 of the German clubs (where a majority of the club sales are owned by fans), the management also rewarded fans for their trust and support even through the club’s worst times. And the supporters have responded back in kind. The club has managed to lease their stadium back (the biggest in Germany) and their already legendary passionately vocal fan-base has gone up from around 8,000 members around ten years ago to almost 100,000 members with some 54,000 season ticket holders. Dortmund also boasts some of the biggest match day attendances in Europe (over 80,500), a number that has consistently risen since Klopp’s arrival.

This dedication to playing successful football with heart and personality is just one more reason why the very-likeable Klopp is revered. He has repaid the Yellow Wall’s unwavering support in the team with a style that reflects the spirit of the city and its people.

“Dortmund is one of those places (where you have to conduct yourself and play football in a certain way). Here people demand that the team should play with the attributes that are closest to my heart: with a lot of feeling and with intensity until the very last minute. We want to play the kind of football people remember.” ai??i?? JA?rgen Klopp

Klopp ensured that he utilised the club’s youth academy resources, kept faith in a squad full of then unknowns and groomed them to be one of the most talked about units in European football. He managed back-to-back Bundesliga titles and a DFB-Pokal by staying true to the club’s new policies of living within their means ai??i?? the 2010-11 championship-winning squad cost less than 5 million to assemble, and the current squad costs less than a certain Fernando Torres.

Dedication to youth development

Youth development has been an area that Germany as a whole have supported since their disastrous performance in the 2000 Euros. Soon after, the DFB implemented policies with an aim of ensuring the future of German football. With a view to improve the opportunities for and the nurturing of young talent in the country, it became compulsory for every side in the Bundesliga to run an educational academy wherein each youth level 12 players were eligible to play for and represent the national side.

Guys like Nuri Sahin and Mario Goetze have come up through the ranks at Dortmund, while Marco Reus (bought from Borussia MAi??nchengladbach to replace the Manchester United-bound Shinji Kagawa) was a local boy originally from Dortmund’s academy. Furthermore, they have enough youth talent waiting in the wings with the likes of Marc Hornschuh, Moritz Leitner, Lasse Sobiech, Daniel Ginczek, Julian Koch and Leonardo Bittencourt.

They also have German internationals like Mats Hummels (an integral part of their defensive stability with his solid centre-back partnership with Subotic), Marcel Schmelzer, Sven Bender, Ilkay GA?ndogan, Sebastien Kehl, and a trio of Polish internationals: striker Robert Lewandowski, right-back Lukasz Piszczek and midfielder (and current Poland captain) Jakub Blaszczykowski. Though the average age of Dortmund is just 24, making them one of the youngest squads in Europe, there is still enough experience and maturity to perfectly balance it out.

Coaching on the cutting edge

But having wonderfully gifted and talented players at their disposal hasn’t been a reason for Klopp to sit on his hands and do nothing. Right from the start, he insisted on discipline, on building a team ethic and working together, and on each player being as technically sharp as possible. Everybody who has watched Dortmund play over the last few years will have noticed the superior technical skills of almost all the players ai??i?? ball control, movement, and spatial awareness of the field.

In his recent interview for The Guardian, the German has listed his first coaching role model, Wolfgang Frank who was Klopp’s manager when he played for Mainz. They took inspiration from Arrigo Sacchi at Milan, with his relentless defensive drills and the belief that you can beat better teams by using tactics. This exactly has been a feature of Dortmund’s current Champions League campaign. They have managed to beat teams like Manchester City, Ajax, Shakhtar Donetsk, Malaga and of course Spanish giants Real Madrid (a massive 4-3 on aggregate).

That final cutting edge also might have something to do with the new training technology that Dortmund have adopted since March 2012. It is a highly sophisticated computerised ball feeding machine called Footbonaut that is designed to improve and develop reaction time as well as different aspects of football skills and techniques.

Designed by Berlin-based designer Christian Guttler, it is an intense training format that cannot be easily replicated in a normal training environment since in as little as 15 minutes, the player will have received and passed as many balls as in an entire regular week of training. The machine also facilitates an easier and faster rehabilitation period for players returning from injury.

Borussia Dortmund are the only team in the world that employ this technology and it highlights not only the club’s vision but also Klopp’s progressive thinking and his desire to leave no stone unturned in building a team around his philosophy. A philosophy based on fast moving, fluid, attractive, attacking football, energetic and tireless work and movement on and off the ball, a desire to quickly regain possession and move the ball up the pitch. And yet this constant pressing doesn’t compromise on defensive solidity.

“We need to defend well if we are to score many goals. It is easy, the team needs to play together closely, in a very solid way … It is important to keep our discipline. If we score a goal we need to defend it, but we need to be daring. We need to score a second. That is the idea we have day by day … We’ve had this idea for a long time. It is not only my idea, it is the idea of the whole team. I haven’t invented football.”Ai??ai??i?? JA?rgen Klopp

Something like the Footbonaut ensures that the Dortmund players are at the peak of their technical abilities and reflexes. That a player’s brains and legs are running at a speed a split-second before the others, that the instinctive reaction is the right one. “Everything at full speed,” like Klopp said in his El PaisAi??interview. (You can take a look at this technology here).

A very special Dortmund team

But there is also a strong team spirit that has been evident right from the start, with every single player playing for each other and towards the one collective goal of victory. There is also a vast singular respect and affection for the manager, who is famed for being as emotionally relatable to the players as he is a disciplinarian. For a while, there has been the sense that something special is happening at the club, and Roman Weidenfeller echoes this. The 32 year old goal-keeper has recently signed a contract extension until 2016 and said:

“Moving to another club had never crossed my mind. What has grown and developed here at Dortmund over the past few years is a uniquely positive football story which I want to play a big part in writing in the years to come.”

The club and manager have certainly been able to build a stable, successful brand for Dortmund that is loved by fans across the world and is equally financially responsible.

But Dortmund’s success has obviously not gone unnoticed, and the club continues to lose some of their best players every year. Last year it was Shinji Kagawa to Manchester United. A few weeks ago, 20-year-old sensation Mario GAi??tze activated the 32 million pound release clause in his contract in order to play for Bayern Munich next season, while Lewandowski is largely rumoured to follow, and Piszczek has been linked with Arsenal among other clubs. It would be a shame if they lost their best players on the cusp of greatness, and the club and manager have a tough time on their hands keeping the rest of this special team together.

Klopp tells Donald McRae that though departures like GAi??tze’s really hurt and outwardly threaten to destabilise the rest of the squad, they are up to the challenge of adapting to the new changes. He does acknowledge the difficulty in replacing vastly talented players like GAi??tze, but says that any transition just takes time. Relishing the opportunity to take the next step in this team’s development, he asks his team for a little more patience.

“If players are patient enough we can develop the team into one of the biggest in the world,” said Klopp.

But first there is the small matter of a Champions League final. A win at Wembley would be all the more poetic with it being potentially the last time this group of players will play together. “Kloppo” as he is fondly referred to by his players urges all the neutrals to be a part of their story, a special story that will hopefully have a fairytale end.

In his own words: “I think, in this moment in the football world, you have to be on ourAi??side.”

_____

By guest author Anushree Nande
Follow the author on Twitter: @AnuNande

Tags: Borussia Dortmund Jurgen Klopp

Borussia Dortmund – History of JA?rgen Klopp’s BVB Project

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