Road to Dortmund | BVB Fan Blog

So this entry comes in about two months after I’ve written the Kovac Magic piece, finishing the Bundesliga season on a high note, surpassing the expectation most of us fans had for the team as we’ve found our beloved club hovering around the latter part of the league table during the winter. What we have seen during spring 2025 was an amazing run from the team, a masterclass in damage control by Niko Kovac and what is still somewhat understated achievement from him, in my view.

What followed was a quick break and off to US for Club World Championship. In the meantime the club secured transfer of Jobe Bellingham, which is (and will likely remain) a highlight acquisition of the summer 2025. I didn’t know much about Jobe, other than comparisons to his older, superstar brother who played for BVB 2020-23 before moving to Real Madrid. So him being identified as a player that BVB will spend 30M EUR on, I was, should I say, positively skeptic. He made me forget about that pretty soon and I believe we have added a great player to the team. There was a lot of negative opinions on the Club World Championship being a money grab, an artificial tournament, a marketing event more than a sporting one. And all of these are probably correct, though I was just happy to see my team play against some of the, for a European fan, more exotic teams. My expectations for my team’s performance we very moderate – players coming out of what was a rollercoaster season, injuries, disappointments, management changes, head coach change midway through the season. This team was due for a summer break and proper, methodical preparation for new campaign. The tournament was also played during summer in full swing in east coast US, meaning the temperatures were super high – not something European teams are used to. Niko Kovac mentioned this few times during the tournament and looking at the schedule of Bundesliga, I actually realized how short the winter break is for German teams – last game of the CY2024 was played on Dec 22, then first game of CY2025 on Jan 10. So these players are kind of used to play in freezing winter but not at all under a blazing sun. So seeing a rather anemic performances by the team throughout the tournament was no surprise. They won their group in a quite unspectacular fashion, then beat Monterrey in the R16 before being knocked out by Real Madrid in quarter finals. One part of me is ok about all this – the team made a decent amount of money, no significant injuries, kind of positive outcome on its own. But then seeing Chelsea winning the tournament, I’m thinking though if we could actually win it if the team was motivated and maintained the momentum they had to close out the Bundesliga season. During the game against Real Madrid, the opponent was the better team most of the time, but BVB actually gave them a run for their money and managed a close result without really playing well apart from the last 5-10 minutes (…situation we’re very much painfully acquainted as BVB fans) and I had a feeling the team very much gave the game away in the first 15 minutes, just by starting the game on the wrong foot. I just didn’t see the hunger, or the drive to win, kind of sensed that they realized they are playing Real Madrid so it’s ok to lose and finally get on a plane back to Europe. Likely I’m wrong here, but that’s what I sensed watching the game. And I’ve said that before in this blog, I believe this team needs to win something, and is overdue to win something. Perhaps make it a sporting priority to go after the DFB Pokal next year, just to give the team the vibe and hunger for more. I believe that would help invigorate the winning mentality across the club a lot. 

What left a strong positive impression thought was performance by Jobe, who immediately shown glimpses of why Kehl & Co were so adamant on getting him as a transfer priority #1 and getting the business done so early in the summer. He really gave me something to look forward to during the season. He was winning the possession, supporting offense, shooting – even scored one. Involved across all aspects of game in a highly competent way. It was quite clear what BVB saw in him and why they invested 30M in bringing him into Dortmund. Very confident and encouraging performance from Jobe.

For now, at the time of writing this, Jobe also remains the only significant acquisition as teams are preparing for next season. The team also added goalkeeper Patrick Drewes, arriving from Bochum for 250k EUR, though while he will provide more stability and experience in the GK position, I don’t expect him to see a lot of playing time for the first team. Other than this, the transfer activity has been focused around managing player exits – Jamie Gittens got his expected big money transfer to Chelsea (~64M EUR), Youssoufa Moukoko went to Copenhagen (5M) and Soumaila Coulibaly to Strasbourg (7.5M). Kjell Watjen was loaned out to Bochum to get more exposure to first team football and Diant Ramaj went to Heidenheim for a year, for similar purpose. For this I give the management full marks so far – we have offloaded players who have not had future with the club for a solid return – especially in case of Gittens, who while immensely talented, proved to also be super frustrating – due to myriad of reasons. Hence from my perspective, the team got a significant sum of money for a player that will not be missed and does not leave a hole in the squad. Perfect. Moukoko and Coulibaly are young and talented but they had their chances to make the team and they didn’t manage to, so it was clear this is a time to move on. Watjen and Ramaj are two young German players that the club sees as future components of the BVB team and it’s great that they get to spend time as first team players in Heidenheim (Bundesliga) and Bochum (recently relegated to 2. Bundesliga).

So now what we’re waiting for as fans is what players the club will add to strengthen the team, on top of Jobe and Patrick Drewes. Lack of rumors might be concerning to some, but I’ll wait until the transfer window is fully and officially over, before making any sort of conclusion. The only thing I’m quite cautious about is the info coming from the media that the management is content with more compact/smaller squad size. This has been a problem last year (…and the one before) due to injuries, veterans who have underperformed last season will be one year older, and the team just spend sizeable portion of summer break competing in Club World Championship. If anything, we do need bigger squad to offset all this, not smaller. It also seems that the club does have the money and is willing to invest, so I’m looking forward to how this plays out. At very least the team needs long-term replacement for Julian Brandt and reinforcements in Defense – especially if Kovac continues to deploy 3 center backs – which I suppose he should, given the results this was driving for the team during last season. We have about 5 weeks until the summer transfer window closes on September 1, so still plenty of time for management to finalize few transfers that will indicate the ambition for next year, and perhaps years to come. While we are getting some indications of what’s being worked at, I remind myself how Niklas Fullkrug’s transfer in 2023 didn’t materialize until August 31st – and how I loved Fullkrug in BVB jersey.