The New Gaffer: Introducing Klopp at Borussia Dortmund

Con­tin­u­ing our series intro­duc­ing the Bundesliga’s newest gaffers is Jür­gen Klopp now with Borus­sia Dort­mund. For those of you at home won­der­ing why Klopp was cho­sen to fol­low Klins­mann won­der no more. Was it to jux­ta­pose the long-serving Klopp with the jour­ney­man Klins­mann? Was it because both were foot­ball com­men­ta­tors for the Ger­man pub­lic tele­vi­sion chan­nel ZDF (Klins­mann at the ’02 WC and Klopp for the ’06 WC and ’08 Euro Cham­pi­onships)? Was it because they both share the name Jür­gen? Yes, actu­ally. So, with­out fur­ther ado, the sec­ond man­ager in our series, Borus­sia Dortmund’s Jür­gen Klopp who arrived from 1. FSV Mainz 05.

He first appeared as a player with Mainz in 1990 and over the next decade plus he played in 325 games, becom­ing the club’s all-time leader in appear­ances by the end of his career. His (interim) man­age­r­ial debut found Mainz lan­guish­ing in the rel­e­ga­tion zone of the 2nd Bun­desliga in Feb­ru­ary 2001. With 19 points from his first 7 games he suc­cess­fully guided the team to safety (fin­ish­ing 14th) and shed­ded his interim tag in the process. The next two sea­sons found the squad just miss out on pro­mo­tion in what can only be called a Schalke-esque aver­sion to suc­cess. Things turned out much bet­ter the next year as Mainz were pro­moted and, more impres­sively, man­aged to stay up for an addi­tional two years before being rel­e­gated once more. He exer­cised a clause in his con­tract that allowed him to move on after Mainz remained in the 2. Bun­desliga last year. There is no doubt that had the club been pro­moted he’d still be man­ag­ing them now. No one doubts his abil­ity to get teams to punch above their weight. The ques­tion is how much of an improve­ment will his new job will actu­ally be. Dort­mund are in dire need of res­cu­ing before they too find them­selves relegated.

It’s hard to imag­ine that lit­tle more than a decade ago, in 1996/97, that Dort­mund were kings of Europe and the world after vic­to­ries over Juven­tus and Cruze­rio. It is dif­fi­cult to find a suit­able com­par­i­son to how fast they fell in Europe after vic­tory, except for per­haps Red Star Bel­grade (a result of the Yugoslav civil war, no doubt). Para­dox­i­cally, their decline is inti­mately inter­twined with their suc­cess. Flush with opti­mism and the per­ceived need to strengthen their squad to con­tinue chal­leng­ing for hon­ors, Dort­mund spent enor­mous sums(by Bun­desliga stan­dards) on bring­ing in new play­ers. In order to facil­i­tate these trans­fers Dort­mund became the first (and only) club to float itself on the stock mar­ket. The club prides itself on firsts: the first Euro­pean tro­phy in 1966 and the first Cham­pi­ons League win in 1997, so the deci­sion to be pub­licly listed is not out of char­ac­ter in a way. Yet the busi­ness model that emerged was con­tin­gent on con­tin­ued Euro­pean suc­cess (or at least qual­i­fi­ca­tion) and foundered badly when this sole con­di­tion was not met.

Dortmund’s fail­ure in Europe would con­se­quently affect the team’s domes­tic per­for­mance, begin­ning a cycle of fail­ure from which it has yet to escape. Since win­ning the league in 2001/02, Dort­mund has steadily fallen in final table every year since (3rd, 6th, 7th, 7th, 9th bot­tom­ing out at 13th last sea­son). As suc­cess and money become scarcer wages are cut which in turn pro­vides another incen­tive for those play­ers dis­sat­is­fied with the team’s per­for­mances to leave. Most Dort­mund fans are unwill­ingly to accept their team’s cur­rent predica­ment and hunger for a return to glory. Yet over their 37 sea­sons in the Bun­desliga, Dortmund’s aver­age final table posi­tion is only 7th. The suc­cess of the 90s that the club and its fans seek to return to is, his­tor­i­cally, an aber­ra­tion. But as Jür­gen Klopp showed with Mainz he can get a team to play above them­selves, which is exactly what Dort­mund need right now to begin chal­leng­ing Bay­ern for league hege­mony once more.

What do you think? Will Jür­gen Klopp’s man­age­r­ial acu­men be enough turn around Dortmund’s for­tunes? Or will struc­tural defi­cien­cies be too much to over­come before either Klopp or club become dis­sat­is­fied with the other?

Next week: Fred Rut­ten at Schalke 04

Tagged as: Borussia Dortmund, Champions League, Cruzerio, European Championships, FC Schalke 04, Juergen Klinsmann, Juergen Klopp, Juventus, Mainz, Red Star Belgrade, World Cup, ZDF