This Borussia Dortmund window just closed. How soon can a Gio Reyna-led window open?
For an eighth season in a row, it’s looking like Borussia Dortmund will not be German champions. After losing a tremendously entertaining Klassiker 1-0 at home against Bayern Munich on Tuesday, the Black and Yellow are closing in on a decade of Bundesliga futility.
For the fifth time in those eight years, Dortmund is probably finishing second, underscoring its status as the German juggernaut that is never quite good enough. Lucien Favre’s side is globally appreciated for its invariably pleasing play, but it hasn’t gotten a whole lot closer to converting competitiveness into championships.
A win at home would have narrowed the gap to a point. The loss makes it seven, with just six games to go. Game over. Notch up yet another Bayern title. Probably.
Dortmund’s best chance actually came last season, when it led the league for 19 straight matchdays and 21 out of 34 overall, before fading again late and managing somehow to let a careening, chaotic Bayern slip by and win another title. The final turn of the tide came in a humiliating 5-0 loss in Munich on April 6, when Dortmund fell out of first place for the final time.
Unlike Bayern, which only ever seems to reload and never to rebuild, Dortmund isn’t the sort of club that can keep adding pieces and addressing problem areas in its squad. Its best players leave. They always have. Windows to win close and it takes a few campaigns for the next to open.
After this season, it’s likely another one of those opportunities will vanish. Presuming the transfer market isn’t devoured by the onset of a gargantuan recession, that is. Just as a talent exodus a few years ago broke up the last title-winning team, this side will probably come apart soon too.
It seems a certainty that leading scorer Jadon Sancho will return to England and join the Premier League this summer. Achraf Hakimi is surely returning to Real Madrid from his loan, or will be sold at a handsome profit. There’s no telling how long Dortmund will be able to hang on to striker sensation Erling Haaland – who only arrived in January but did so on a contract clearly designed to allow him to leave whenever he chooses. And even other squad members like Raphael Guerreiro and Julian Brandt could prove hard to retain when bigger clubs come knocking.
In truth, Dortmund did an admirable job of replacing forwards Ousmane Dembele and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang when they left two summers ago, and when the club sold USMNT star Christian Pulisic in January of 2019, to move over the summer, Sancho had already wrested his starting job. Dortmund hardly missed a beat the next year. But that kind of seamless transition from one set of star players to another is very rare.
This time around, the losses will probably be too much to compensate for immediately. Others will arise, like 17-year-old American Gio Reyna, who has broken into the first team in the second half of the season and made another substitute appearance against Bayern. And with Bayern already stocked with young talent, another title challenge might be a year or two away for Dortmund.
Tuesday’s loss, in that regard, may be remembered as the final act in this cycle. A tight game cantered on Joshua Kimmich’s splendid first-half chip, which caught out goalkeeper Roman Burki. Dortmund had its chances. Haaland got an open shot at a goal manned only by defender Jerome Boateng. Thorgan Hazard didn’t quite get his timing right on a low cross during a second-half surge. Sancho was allowed to run at the defense a few times.
But Dortmund didn’t quite have enough. Just as Dortmund hasn’t quite had enough ever since the 2011-12 season, when then-manager Jurgen Klopp led his side to a second consecutive Bundesliga title. Some years, something has been missing: a competent defense, momentum, experience, better fortune. In other campaigns, mostly under Pep Guardiola, Bayern was simply imperious and nothing Dortmund might have done could have made any difference.
It will probably be a while before Dortmund is this good again as Bayern marches on.
Leander Schaerlaeckens is a Yahoo Sports soccer columnist and a sports communication lecturer at Marist College. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.
More from Yahoo Sports:
