Borussia Dortmund need to beat Mainz on Saturday to win the Bundesliga title. Adam Bate speaks to players, staff and club legends to discover how this special club came from sixth at the halfway stage to find themselves on the brink of ending Bayern Munich’s long reign
There is only one place to be on Saturday afternoon and that is with the 81,365 supporters at Signal Iduna Park as Borussia Dortmund host Mainz. Victory for the home side would end Bayern Munich’s decade-long domination in the Bundesliga.
There are 200 seats in the press box but the number of applications has hit 1000. Fan interest is even more intense. “You can imagine how many requests I have had,” says sporting director Sebastian Kehl. How many could they sell? “Perhaps 500,000,” he adds.
Dortmund has been waiting for this. German football has been waiting for this. The irony of that moment arriving in this of all seasons is not lost on Kehl or the club. A new sporting director. A new head coach. And scoring sensation Erling Haaland sold.
His replacement last summer was Sebastien Haller. He was diagnosed with testicular cancer during pre-season. That was bigger than football and, ultimately, it has galvanised and inspired. But in the short term it also presented a football problem.
Haller could not play until his dramatic return in January. At that stage, Karim Adeyemi, the other major forward acquisition of the summer, had yet to score either. Dortmund had gone into the World Cup break languishing in sixth. A title win was implausible.
And yet, here they are. Uncharacteristically, Bayern have faltered. More importantly, Dortmund have capitalised. They won their first eight Bundesliga games of 2023 and have picked up 10 more points than any other team since the turn of the year.
“The season was like a rollercoaster,” says Kehl, a man who won the title three times with Dortmund as a player. The end is now in sight. “Hopefully, we can show the whole world that we well deserve to be champion after a decade of Bayern Munich.”
