SSince Friday, you’ve had the feeling that Borussia Dortmund will soon need a new goalscorer. The old one makes a fuss.
In any case, Erling Haaland is in a terrible mood. Then he wipes away the Freiburg side with BVB, scores two goals himself in a 5-1 win and then still manages to ruin the whole of the evening in Soccer Dortmund by publicly announcing his waning feelings.
Haaland came out in Norwegian, straight into the TV microphone of compatriot and former Bundesliga striker Jan-Aage Fjörtoft, and when he asked him about his health, he complained: “In the last six months, out of respect for Dortmund, I have decided to do nothing about it accept. But now the club have started to pressure me into making a decision about my future. Playing football is all I want. But they put the pressure on. So I have to make a decision soon.”
If there are still BVB fans who don’t see this message as a threat: the key word in it is respect, and Haaland suddenly lost that. The Dortmund bosses, he complains, make it difficult for him to enjoy life and scoring goals. Sports director Michael Zorc has been quite amazed since then, apparently he didn’t even know how angry a Viking can be. Pressure? On the spot, Zorc denied the suspicion under oath: “There are no deadlines, no deadlines, there weren’t even any talks.”
Dortmund is only cloud six for Haaland
After Haaland’s interview, they may no longer be necessary. Then someone rings the bell for divorce, and in the end only one question has to be clarified: Who is to blame?
In football it’s like in real life, at the beginning of a love affair everything is perfect. And at Borussia Dortmund anyway, every up-and-coming promising person feels at home there, great stadium, great audience, great atmosphere. Zorc and his scouts also have a great nose, long before young Haaland they discovered young Lewandowski, or young Aubameyang, or the dribblers Dembele and Sancho. Everyone has fun in Dortmund, everyone loves the fans, the atmosphere and the lively BVB football, but then they suddenly want to take the next step, up high, into football heaven, cloud nine.
78 goals in 77 BVB games: The rate is right, but Erling Haaland is not satisfied at the moment
Which: REUTERS
Dortmund is only cloud six, also for Haaland. He is now 21 and ready for the top, at least it seems that he is no longer ready to be eliminated in the preliminary round of the Champions League as he was last time with BVB. It was probably no coincidence that around the same time Haaland’s agent Mino Raiola announced in a “Sport1” interview: “Erling can and will take the next step. Bayern, Real, Barcelona, Manchester City – these are the big clubs, too where he can go.”
This free selection is the greatest feeling for Raiola and for Haaland, but only half as nice for Dortmund – there, the racy Borussia now feels like a wife who has to listen to who her best friend from the summer is every few days would like to go to bed.
Fans in particular find it difficult to cope with such low blows, they quickly feel like they have been horned and angrily search for the culprit. When Aubameyang and Dembele left at the time, it was easy, the two just wordlessly and shamelessly bullied themselves away to the fatter troughs, and all of Dortmund was very happy in the end. Haaland could be more explosive – because the Norwegian now gives the impression that the BVB board has been bothering him for months and spoiling his mood.
The good news: Michael Zorc is someone who can defend himself, he has gone through many a steel bath, at the latest at Ciro Immobile. The Italian complained a few years ago after his departure that Dortmund had prevented him, to the point of mental cruelty, from playing his goal threat and being worth his money.
The coach Tuchel, for example, complained to Immobile, “didn’t want me to get an interpreter” – apparently Tuchel was inspired by the insidious ulterior motive of using this harassment to get the Italian to learn the German language. We no longer know whether Immobile also complained that the Dortmunders didn’t blow powdered sugar up his butt every day, warmed up the toilet seat or got a butler – but Zorc has virtuously refuted all the main allegations.
Now everyone is curious to see how the BVB sports director will get along with Erling Haaland or his advisor Raiola in the next few days. Insiders credibly claim that he is a master of the arts and a master of staging, and malicious tongues swear that Haaland obediently makes an unfunny face whenever Raiola recommends him to make an unfunny face.
By the way, before the interview on Friday evening it was like this: Jan-Aage Fjörtoft had met in the box area of the Dortmund stadium for a brief exchange of ideas with Haaland’s father, who used to storm next to him in the Norwegian national team, and then the conversation between Fjörtoft and the boy took place Haaland as it happened then.
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The Dortmunders have been stunned since then, but make the best of it like managing director Hans-Joachim Watzke (“Haaland is a spontaneous young lad, he can do that”) – and sports director Zorc is now even bringing a variant into play that may not have been thought of enough becomes: “Maybe the interview happened out of emotion. Because Erling was upset and extremely upset about the yellow card shortly before the end, which was a bit excessive.”
That would be the solution: In that case, everything would only be half as bad.
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