Borussia Dortmund must have felt a distant memory of excitement as the yellow walls shook and roared in the minutes after Niklas Fürkrk's goal. Waves of attacks hit Paris Saint-Germain, leaving them dizzy and exhausted. The world glowed with possibility. For a moment, reaching the Champions League final seemed within reach.
This is what it used to be like, or at least something close to it, back when Dortmund shocked Europe. Gregor Kobel, the team's goalkeeper, made a bold turn inside his own penalty area. Mats Hummels, a regular in the lineup 10 years ago, was throwing languid passes with the outside of his foot. Jadon Sancho and Karim Adeyemi were electric and relentless.
Of course, it could all be in vain. It's more than a chance, really. Dortmund may regret not scoring the second goal for the rest of their lives. PSG also had ample opportunities to threaten, at one point hitting the post twice in 10 seconds. Tuesday's return match in Paris may be less forgiving.
However, it is still an unexpected development that Dortmund will head to France with hopes, perhaps even a little hope. After all, this week was supposed to be a punishing week for German football. Most expected Dortmund and Bayern Munich, the two biggest clubs in the Bundesliga, to be exposed in the Champions League semi-finals. Still, both teams remained vibrant until the middle of the match.
Dortmund's case was even more extreme. The club has spent much of this season searching for itself. Dortmund coach Edin Terzic has been under intense scrutiny for so long that it's probably fair to assume he has memorized the password to his personnel portal. The club enter this weekend languishing in fifth place in the Bundesliga, but their form has been patchy and progress has stalled.
The disappointment was compounded by the fact that Bayern Munich failed to become German champions for the first time in more than a decade. The problem is that neither will Borussia Dortmund. Instead, Bayer Leverkusen stepped up. The fairytale success story, which reads like a scathing critique of Dortmund's Signal Iduna Park, crystallizes a sense of selfishness and purposelessness that has been festering for some time.
Dortmund's modern identity has long been that it is the club of tomorrow. This was best symbolized by the Futbonaut, a $1 million machine installed by Dortmund to improve players' technique and reaction speed, even if at one time it was considered the definition of cutting edge. Now it seems like a short and fleeting folly.
So was Dortmund. This was the forge of football's next generation, where the next big names were forged. On Wednesday, two of the school's graduates, Ousmane Dembele and Achraf Hakimi, returned to Paris wearing PSG colors, and almost every major team in Europe now has at least one. A number of players have left the club's production line, including Jude Bellingham, Erling Haaland, Ilkay Gundogan and Robert Lewandowski.
Dortmund was also the place where ideas were born, the club that nurtured Jurgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel and introduced their gospel to the world. Dortmund is positioned as the spiritual home and perfect showroom for a style known (though not entirely accurately) as Gegenpressing. This style is a uniquely German philosophy that has long been the norm for worthy teams.
However, in recent years, that reputation has been shaky. Dortmund, like Bayern and German football in general, is a small and conservative place in many ways. Change does not come easily or naturally. There is comfort in what is familiar and tried and true. Revolution was always a last resort.
A good example is how the company tried to deal with mounting hardships. Terzic himself was initially appointed as something of a replacement for Klopp, with his lifelong fan and former protégé initially taking charge on an interim basis. When his permanent successor faltered, the club brought him back full-time.
When the club decided that the cast of geniuses they had assembled to recreate the skills of Klopp's best teams needed a little more experience and a little more grizzly, they turned to Hummels and reinstated him into the team. I let it happen. Another hero of yesteryear, Mario Götze, had previously been allowed to return home.
In January, towards the end of the season, Dortmund offered Jadon Sancho his return and an escape from Manchester United. At the same time, Terzic added two new (and old) faces to his coaching staff: Nuri Şahin and Sven Bender. Both were relatively recent former players. Dortmund's operating principle seems to be that the answer to any question can be found in the past.
As a result, Dortmund has turned into an act of tribute to itself, a club unprepared to understand what tomorrow will bring, a team forever chasing yesterday. It's ironic that, given the rivalry, this is exactly the kind of thing Bayern Munich always do.
After all, Bayern's modern empire has been built by a group of former players, all of whom claim to be the only ones with the institutional knowledge to lead such a demanding team. He has been appointed to various executive roles as an expression of the club's public beliefs. And capricious—huge.
However, under their auspices, the Bayern team was allowed to grow old, the club became only slightly obsolete, and there is now a widespread recognition that something more radical is needed. Bayern Munich were considering handing control of their destiny to Ralf Rangnick, the man chosen to midwife football into the modern era. He turned down Bayern's approach on Thursday, but the fact that he was being considered signals the club's recognition that it is premature for something more transformative than would normally be allowed.
He insists that both Dortmund and Bayern should have foreseen this coming, suggests that there were red flags, and denounces their resistance to change as naive romanticism or a form of deranged short-termism. It's really a simple reflex. , or bloated complacency.
But this week was a pretty neat summary of why football as a whole, both in Germany and outside Germany, has found it so difficult to embrace change.
On Tuesday, Bayern's apparent mishmash of veterans and mediocrities (and Harry Kane) came so close to defeating Real Madrid that the Allianz Arena bounced as the German greats found their range. I felt elated. There was a moment the next day when it felt like Dortmund might overwhelm PSG, national funds are cursed. Not bad for two teams that are supposed to be stuck in their respective pasts.
Of course, that may be the high point. Next week, we might be back in more familiar territory. The need for change and its causes will not disappear with one thrilling performance. However, the boundaries between one era and the next are not always clear-cut. Instead, they often become blurry and indistinct. Time moves on. But every team has moments when it feels like the clock has turned back.
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One area where Bayern Munich cannot be accused of being afraid of change is with their uniforms.
Most teams hold the format, if not the exact design, of their home jerseys sacred. Barcelona plays in blue and red. Real Madrid is completely white. Chelsea is royal blue, Manchester City's sky is yellow, and Borussia Dortmund's crossing guard is yellow.
That obviously doesn't stop them from releasing new editions every season. Those customers aren't going to be milked for themselves. However, the changes tend to be subtle and even superficial. Juventus, Arsenal, Atlético His Madrid jersey is still instantly recognizable. This is one area where tradition and brand recognition create the perfect synergy.
However, Bayern Munich have been playing in white kits this season, with red trim added, perhaps in industry parlance. In recent years, we have released shirts in red, red with white horizontal stripes, red with white vertical stripes, and red and blue stripes. With so many varieties, it's no longer difficult to remember what Bayern's home kit looks like.
This is clearly a source of frustration for the club's ultras. On Tuesday, the Allianz Arena's Südkurbe unfurled a banner detailing the fans' belief that Bayern's colors should be red and white and nothing else – certainly among many others. ). It is difficult to find fault with their arguments on this matter. There are some traditions that should be maintained.
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If the nature of that change were ultimately less tedious, there would even be more recognition that the Premier League is facing a period of fundamental change. It's hard to get too excited that the UK government is introducing a regulator because of the word 'regulator'.
Similarly, a motion (approved in principle this week) to change the league's financial controls so that teams can only spend five times the TV revenue of their lowest-earning club sounds exciting. If it sounds like someone is talking about accounting, that's mainly because that's what they are.
But those involved in the Premier League, who don't want either of those things to happen, have a very convincing counterargument. Forcing the league to rein in reckless spending, they say, is a surefire way to give up global dominance. The moment the Premier League stops throwing money around like drunken pirates and endangering England's dignity, other leagues will take advantage.
One small problem with this argument is that it's complete nonsense. It's hard to emphasize how much that misunderstands the global economy of football.
Bournemouth have far more financial resources than AC Milan simply because they are in the Premier League. All 20 Premier League clubs are among the 30 richest football teams in the world. No league has ever had such a dominant financial position over all its rivals.
There are three clubs outside England likely considering spending $625 million on playing costs, two of which would be subject to much stronger cost controls than the measures proposed in England. It has become. No one is going to “capture” England. That is, unless England's unbridled spending leads to some sort of collapse.