Here’s why Borussia Dortmund can’t win the Bundesliga

In the last 20 years, Borussia Dortmund have won the Bundesliga just twice. Both of those championships came under Jürgen Klopp in the 2010/2011 and 2011/12 seasons. No club in Germany has been able to end Bayern München’s reign of dominance since then, and Die Roten look poised to secure an unprecedented 11th straight Bundesliga title.

Every year, a few football fans outside the Bundesliga get their hopes up that Dortmund may challenge Bayern for the title, but BVB fans and astute German football fans know better than to set any expectations.

Dortmund is a historic club. They once beat Juventus in a Champions League Final and took down an amazing Real Madrid squad in the Champions League semifinals roughly 10 years ago.

Yet it seems like they cannot come anywhere near Bayern year after year. They came close to winning the title in 2018/19 during a season in which Bayern were in a state of transition; that was the year they waved farewell to club icons Arjen Robben and Franck Ribéry. Dortmund even won the Hinrunde that season, yet collapsed in the end, even to a weak Bayern.

Let’s break down why Die Schwarzgelben have such a difficult time competing with Bayern when they should be their toughest competition in the Bundesliga. No other league is lacking in as much turnover in the title race – not even Ligue 1, where PSG were up-ended by Lille and Monaco in recent years.

A high degree of roster turnover

Because Dortmund do not have the sponsors and economic opportunities Bayern do, they have to specifically focus on player recruitment. BVB’s focus is on signing young players with high potential, providing them a platform to develop, and selling them at a profit that they can then use to fund signings that can help the team compete in the short term.

These short-term signings can be super-talented youngsters like Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham, or they can be established Bundesliga players like Thorgan Hazard or Mats Hummels.

This approach has enabled Dortmund to remain financially stable. It is important for people to remember that Dortmund almost went bankrupt in the years after their Champions League triumph. They invested heavily in big-name players and tried to go “Hollywood” to beat out Bayern, but they made a lot of unwise investments and spent money they did not have. And all they had to show for it was one league title in that timespan.

With the rise of state-run clubs and the increasing disparity between the Premier League and other top five European leagues, more and more teams are having to follow a strategy like Dortmund’s. And while Dortmund have the supporters and name recognition to take more risks on the transfer market than, say, Freiburg or Union Berlin, they are still a fan-owned club. They must be even more careful than similarly-established clubs around Europe like Atlético Madrid or AC Milan.

While this transfer strategy helps Dortmund keep its brand identity as a friendly club for exciting young talents, specifically forwards who can play free-flowing football, it leads to a high degree of roster turnover. Dortmund have to allow players like Ousmane Dembélé, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Henrik Mkhitaryan, Ilkay Gündogan, Jadon Sancho, and Haaland leave when they have developed. Even when they do not lose these players to Bayern as they did Mario Götze, Mats Hummels, and Robert Lewandowski, replacing great talents is not immediate – not even when a fee well over 50 million euros is involved.

This high degree of roster turnover prevents Dortmund from having continuity or having the world’s best players at their best. BVB usually gets them BEFORE they have hit their best, whereas Bayern, their chief competitor in Germany, has the likes of Joshua Kimmich, Serge Gnabry, and Leroy Sané (just to name three) at the peak of their powers.

Dortmund have invested in the wrong veterans

I mentioned that Dortmund can invest the money they obtain from transfers to sign more young talents or to sign veteran players who can help the team here and now and offer balance to the squad.

The problem is that BVB have shown on multiple occasions that they are unable to sign the right players. Sometimes things are down to bad luck, but there are a number of experienced players currently on Dortmund who simply aren’t good enough for a club with Bundesliga title aspirations.

After the 2018/19 season, Dortmund wisely decided to be aggressive on the transfer market. There are people who accuse the club of not being ambitious and focused on selling players to make money, but this is totally unfair. Dortmund does not have the financial resources or funding to ignore the transfer market as a means of profit. As with a club like Benfica, they also do not have the resources to afford to match the wages clubs like Manchester United or Manchester City can offer to budding superstars like Sancho and Haaland, respectively.

So after pushing Bayern in 2018/19, BVB showed that aggressiveness by signing four of the top performers in the Bundesliga from that season. They added Nico Schulz from Hoffenheim, Thorgan Hazard from Borussia Mönchengladbach, and Julian Brandt from Bayer Leverkusen. In total, they spent 76 million euros on these three players. Each of them cost BVB about 25 million euros. On top of that, they spent 30.50 million euros to sign back Hummels from rivals Bayern.

Out of these four players, only Hummels is still truly important to Dortmund. The club should be actively trying to get rid of the other three, though Hazard is versatile enough to be a useful squad player. Brandt needs to be replaced by a more dynamic and consistent player, while Schulz is an abuser with no future at the club (and, by the way, was one of the worst players to have ever worn the Dortmund kit before his horrible actions were revealed).

The bad business doesn’t stop there, though. Dortmund still have 2020 summer signings Emre Can and Thomas Meunier, who are below-average Bundesliga starters. Neither of them are good enough to be in the squad and represent further examples of Dortmund’s poor recruitment of veteran players. Even if we say that Meunier is free, his wages are simply too high, especially for a club like BVB.

When adding in wages, Dortmund have invested something above 100 million euros in experienced players who are not easy to transfer away and are not helping the team substantially. They are taking spots away from young players or from other veteran players who would be more effective. Worst of all, in comparison to Bayern’s starters, they have nowhere near the quality necessary to challenge for the Bundesliga title.

Bayern München is truly that good

We have to close by finishing with a point that is very important to emphasize. Yes, there are some things Bayern are able to do in dominating German football that do not seem fair, but it is also true that clubs could have done more to prevent Bayern from signing their players for free. Now, a club like RB Leipzig that is a for-profit, company-owned enterprise has no issue selling players to Bayern on the cheap (such as Dayot Upamecano and Marcel Sabitzer), but Bayern’s operations are no different from what Juventus and Barcelona do in their respective leagues. And let’s not get started on PSG.

Juve no longer dominate Serie A, and Barcelona have not truly dominated LaLiga in a long time. Neither have Real Madrid, for that matter, even if they are reigning champions.

So what makes Bayern so difficult to stop? They aren’t state-run like PSG. They aren’t even owned by a corporation like Juventus is. Sure, the gap between Bayern and Dortmund in terms of financial backing is bigger than the one between Real and Barça or Inter and Juve, for example, but Bayern is still a fan-owned club just like the beloved BVB.

After Dortmund won the Bundesliga in back-to-back seasons and went head-to-head with Bayern in the Champions League Final, Die Roten’s execs swore up and down that their status as THE supreme brand in German football would never, ever be challenged again.

Bayern held to their word, whereas Dortmund could not further their success and were a flash in the pan. Losing Lewandowksi directly to Bayern for free was a devastating blow that BVB could not recover from, and Bayern do have more room to “fail” on the transfer market.

But as Barça and Juve have shown us, even the level of financial power Bayern have does not fully insulate a club from transfer mishaps. The thing is, Bayern have been smart enough to avoid unnecessary risks. Their recruitment has been tremendous, and, scarily enough, Bayern’s transfer strategies are becoming more experimental, modern, and clever.

Bayern are one of the best-run clubs in world football. They have years of status built up, branding and marketing power that pales to nobody in the country of Germany, and a clear club hierarchy and structure. Do they get everything right? No, and Hansi Flick’s departure despite utter dominance in 2019/20 is a sign that they are not perfect. But with Julian Nagelsmann as the long-term replacement, it’s clear that Bayern have a way of pivoting quickly after any setback.

Dortmund have not shown this ability to avoid transfer pitfalls, this ability to pick the right managers, or a level of consistency needed to truly challenge Bayern. Die Roten have been near-perfect, whereas Dortmund have been too flawed to bridge a gap that has, more than anything, increased since 2018/19. With Bayern ready to lock down first and BVB currently outside the top four after embarrassing losses to Wolfsburg and Borussia Mönchengladbach, Die Schwarzgelben have to realize that they have already missed the wake-up call.