Edin Terzic smiled when he spoke on Tuesday afternoon about the unfortunate state of his team, for which there is hardly a better term than: stagnation. It’s “not fun for him to have to answer the same questions over and over again,” said the Borussia Dortmund coach in a friendly manner, assuring “that the lads already know what’s at stake.”
As always, this likeable football coach appeared well prepared before the cup game against Hannover 96 this Wednesday (6 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the DFB Cup and on Sky) and spread a good mood: “We’re looking forward to the game on Sunday that we can do better there,” he said, although Sunday’s 2-0 defeat at Union Berlin left many Dortmunders with a dull ache, with increasing doubts about the effect of Terzic’s measures.
Dortmund have not had so few points after ten match days since 2014, the difference between claim and reality is increasing. A year ago, the club with coach Marco Rose had scored 24 points at the same time of the season with a goal difference of 27:15, Terzic has 16 points and 13:14 goals.
“We are praised week after week for what potential we have,” said defender Niklas Süle on Sunday, “but then we also have to play with more conviction.” In essence, it’s always about the same topic: the lack of willingness to play without exception to complete the necessary tasks in each individual game situation that “you don’t feel like doing so much” (Terzic).
Football will always remain a complex team sport, but the main person responsible for developing the dormant potential in a squad is usually the coach, who simply doesn’t get ahead in Dortmund. No wonder he’s not as friendly towards the team as he is in front of the cameras.
On Monday there was a discussion between Terzic, sports director Sebastian Kehl and the players, in which it “also got a little louder and very clear”, as the coach reported. “You can be sure that the boys know what it’s about. When you listen to the players, you hear the right things. You just have to implement it.”
Measures against old problems
This is where things get stuck, which is why the impression is growing that Terzic’s measures against the old problems could be as ineffective as the attempts by his predecessors Peter Bosz, Lucien Favre or Marco Rose to form BVB into a real successful team. But all of these BVB coaches had collected more points than Terzic after a third of the season. Maybe this feeling of wasting title chances again is one of the reasons why the experienced Mats Hummels recently made headlines several times with clear and for some colleagues probably also hurtful statements.
His “heel-tip-one-two-three” criticism from the previous week sparked much debate and cast some colleagues in a very bad light. On Sunday, Hummels again asked his teammates not to kick for pretty pictures in their own social media accounts, but for success with the team. Karim Adeyemi was clearly meant, whose failed back-heel trick had initiated the goal to 0:2. But people like Donyell Malen, Raphael Guerreiro and the now somewhat more reliable Julian Brandt can also feel addressed.
Hummels as a critic
The fact that Hummels is a player who has become the harshest critic, whose views determine the public debate about BVB more than Terzic’s words, is unusual and raises the question of whether this is not the authority of this very friendly, but always quite harmless acting head coach is undermined. Especially since it cannot be ignored that Terzic would like to communicate differently.
“It is important” to him, “that we speak in ‘we’, and this time Mats spoke in ‘we’,” he said on Tuesday. However, he would prefer it if “we address it internally that we don’t discuss these topics in public, but within our own four walls”. Hummels does not adhere to this requirement, and the “we” does not apply unconditionally either. Any attentive observer knows very well that Hummels means the mistakes of certain colleagues rather than himself.
In any case, Terzic is slowly arriving in a Dortmund everyday life in which other coaches have already been crushed, and some are beginning to remember that his first time as head coach at BVB was not a brilliant success story.
His record as interim coach between days 12 and 34 of the 2021/2022 season, when he stepped in for the sacked Lucien Favre in early December, is mixed. At that time he took over the team in fifth place in the table and only reached the Champions League three games before the end of the season because Eintracht from Frankfurt, who had a seven-point lead over BVB after 27 match days, suddenly lost one game after the other.
Now BVB has once again reached a point where the mood could quickly change if the results are good. In any case, a cup elimination in Hanover would hardly be acceptable, after the team had already been too comfortable last year to defend themselves with enough energy against the intensively fighting FC St. Pauli in the DFB Cup.
