Why underdog status could never satisfy Borussia Dortmund

Despite the glitz and the glamour of modern football, the sport can often be boiled down to simple truisms that have stood the test of time. At Borussia Dortmund this week, following an embarrassing 5-1 defeat to newly-promoted Stuttgart, the writing was on the wall for head coach Lucien Favre after it seemed as though he had finally lost the confidence of his dressing room.

"We're a team that can't defend," said team captain Marco Reus, after watching his side get dismantled at an empty Westfalenstadion. He went on to describe the result as "shameful”, before Mats Hummels had his say. "2-1, we gave the ball away. 3-1, we gave the ball away. 4-1, we gave the ball away," ranted the senior defender. The following day Favre was asked to clear his desk and was duly sacked as Dortmund manager.

The decision was one that was hardly taken lightly. However, it was one that was thrust upon sporting director Michael Zorc and club CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke after a string of results which had threatened to upend Dortmund’s entire season.

In their last five games, Dortmund have won just one - a dead rubber against Zenit St Petersburg in the Champions League - and dropped eight points in a Bundesliga title race that has already shown Bayern Munich are far from the well-oiled machine that they were last season.

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Indeed, it’s not so much that Dortmund now sit five points off their Bavarian rivals but rather the fact that RB Leipzig recently managed to take a point off them at the Allianz Arena a week ago and sit level on points with Hansi Flick’s side. Bayer Leverkusen, managed by former Dortmund manager Peter Bosz, have done one better and now sit top of the league table after their win over Hoffenheim on Sunday night.

The German giants considered themselves contenders for silverware this season and Favre simply didn’t look like the man that could provide that for the club. Which, in some ways, goes to show how far Dortmund had come under the Swiss manager.

It’s easy to look at Dortmund and assume they should be Germany’s defacto challengers to Bayern’s dominance, but Favre arrived at the club in the summer of 2018 when it was at the deepest depths of its post-Klopp era. A year before they had sacked Klopp’s apparent successor, Thomas Tuchel, after a falling out with Zorc and Watzke and chewed through two managers - Bosz and Peter Stoger - with a squad that finished fourth and qualified for the Champions League on goal difference.

Favre took a squad in desperate need of stability and direction and got Dortmund back on track. Although he leaves Dortmund without a major trophy to his name, the 63-year-old manager’s points per game average in the Bundesliga will go down in history as better than Klopp’s and on a par with Tuchel’s. There’s little doubt that Favre got Dortmund back to where they should be, but it then became clear that he couldn’t take them to the next level that they desperately wanted to go.

For example, while Favre may have taken Dortmund to two second-place finishes in the Bundesliga - and one within two points of Bayern - he managed just one victory and five defeats from six league tests against the Bavarian giants.

In Europe, where Klopp’s Dortmund once collected big scalps for fun and won over the hearts of football fans everywhere with their Champions League final in 2013, Favre’s teams have often looked like a side that unquestionably knows their place and offer very little resistance.

Reaching the Last 16 stage for three consecutive seasons will do wonders for Dortmund’s bank balance, but a failure to get beyond that - admittedly after coming up against two eventual finalists in Tottenham and then PSG - perhaps underlines the limitations of Favre’s tactics. The Swiss coach did the bare minimum for the German club but never seemed capable of punching upwards and being a great disrupter like Klopp or even Tuchel had been.

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Managers rarely get sacked for showing a lack of ambition in front of the TV cameras but Favre perhaps cornered himself when he was recently asked to defend his team’s form after a 3-1 defeat to Koln was followed by a 1-1 draw to Lazio. “We don’t need to underestimate ourselves, but we also need to stop overestimating ourselves,” said the Dortmund coach. Ambition, it seems, wasn’t something that came naturally to Favre.

This limitation in Favre’s capacity as a coach came to the fore this season when Dortmund’s impressive transfer dealings had provided the senior manager with a squad that seemed to have the right blend of experience in Hummels, Emre Can and Marco Reus and legitimate young stars like Erling Haaland, Jadon Sancho and Giovanni Reyna.

However, despite having all the tools to hand, Favre lost control of the raw ambition in his side. It’s no coincidence that the poor run that cost him his job coincided with Haaland’s first injury since arriving in Germany. And while Sancho and Reyna tried to compensate for a striker that had scored 33 goals in his first 32 games for the club, it became apparent that beneath Haaland’s form was a Dortmund team that had no idea what to do if he wasn’t single-handedly winning them games.

Against Stuttgart, like the 1-1 draw with Eintracht Frankfurt the week before, Dortmund played with a conservative 5-2-3 formation that allowed the opponents to dominate the midfield and limit Favre’s side to confusing and calamitous counter attacks. Like a rock show managed by a librarian, Favre’s star-studded side looked frustratingly restricted and muffled by the man in charge.

The challenge that now faces the club is to find a manager that can build on the foundations Favre has laid down and take Dortmund to the next level domestically and in Europe. It’s one thing for the club to scout and sign talents like Haaland, Sancho and Reyna but it’s another thing entirely to convince them to stick around for long enough to achieve anything beyond a substantial profit in the transfer market.

Perhaps that will require a manager that contrasts wildly with the rational and calculated mind of Favre. Maybe for Dortmund to reach the next level they’ll need a coach who believes in the unbelievable and gets these young stars running through walls for him. Klopp once did it and took the German club to new heights. Favre was never that man, but it’s now undoubtedly what Dortmund need.