As an evening filled with whimsical stories about Jürgen Klopp’s antics draws to a close, I try to pay the bill at the downtown burger-house in Dortmund, but the barman brings the jokes to an abrupt halt. “We don’t accept card payments here. Nobody in this city does!” Jens Volke, one of the staff on the Borussia Dortmund media team, interjects to explain: “There’s a movement in which locals don’t want to use credit cards, to stop Big Brother watching our every move.” I make my way to the cashpoint thinking that things are done differently around here.
That distinctive tone is also apparent the next morning at Borussia Dortmund’s training ground in Brackel. While chatting to staff, I notice that no two people – whether youth players, first-team stars, kitchen workers or kitmen – walk past each other in the corridor without shaking hands and offering a greeting. There is a congenial feel to this club that comes from the top.
The club specialises in producing both players and coaches. Mario Götze and Marco Reus graduated from their youth teams and so too did David Wagner, Daniel Farke, Jan Siewert and Hannes Wolf. “It’s a family,” says academy manager Lars Ricken. “We’re a big club with a huge stadium, but our heart beats here at Brackel. There’s an environment that has been created and we’re desperate for anybody with this club’s badge on their chest to succeed.”
Having grown up at the club, played for the first team 457 times, won three Bundesliga titles and scored with his first touch as Dortmund defeated Juventus in the 1997 Champions League final, one-club man Ricken is a Dortmund legend who knows what it takes to reach the top. “We want to win titles from Under-14 upwards, so it’s important our staff create a winning culture so the boys are ready to step up to the top at any point. We look for work ethic. Our coaches will never say: ‘OK, I need four new players, two new training pitches with heating and my staff is too small.’ No, they want to work with the current situation and this serves them well for their future. We love to see how they develop, even if it’s at other clubs.”
“For example, our first-team assistant coach, Edin Terzic, was assisting with the Under-19s and we really saw something in him so wanted him to lead our Under-16s. Just three days after the start of the season, Slavan Bilic called him and he was gone to coach at Beşiktaş. He ended up coaching in the Premier League with West Ham before we finally brought him home to Dortmund. Hannes Wolf was the same. We always keep close relationships with our coaches as they grow professionally. Maybe there’ll be a point in the future when they can come back to Dortmund.”
As the younger age-groups train, Under-12 coach Andreas Bona tell me about the club. “If Dortmund want someone from the area, they get him,” says Bona. “This is a special place, a huge club, and it’s everybody’s dream to play or coach here. Once you’re in, it becomes your life. As of this season, every coach from Under-9s up is now employed on a full-time basis and we’re well looked after. The Under-17 boss goes to the Under-11 coach for advice and we all want each other to progress. That’s rare in the football world.”
“We have principles, but they are very flexible. Coaches have breathing space to teach in their own way; this creates versatile players who can adapt too. Almost 60 of our academy graduates are playing professionally, both in Germany and abroad, so something is working.
Lars wants us to have our own personality and pathway. The club is supportive in every step. In fact, I just did my Uefa A licence and the club paid the €530 fee and accommodated for me to go and complete the four-week course. It’s easy to get on and pay for the courses here.
“Christian Fluthmann, who was the assistant of Farke at Norwich, was my colleague at the Under-16s and now he’s finally doing his Uefa Pro level with the English FA. He told me it’s incredibly difficult to get on courses there due to so many ex-professionals taking places and they also don’t want too many foreigners enrolled.”
The jovial lambasting of English football continues as Volke interrupts to ask if I would rather watch this evening’s match from the press box or on the “Yellow Wall with all the staff.” “It’s still allowed in Germany, to drink and stand and sing,” says Volke. “We still do it properly here! I remember going to Arsenal in the Champions League and the locals were sitting silently, staring at us like we were crazy.”
As players go through their drills, Ricken talks about the culture of the academy. “In recent years we’ve had to bring in various professionals for assorted fields as we weren’t happy with the mentality of some players, including the first team. For example, last year we had the best squad by far in the U19 Bundesliga but didn’t win the Championship; in fact we were lucky to make the play-offs. We had to sit down and have a meeting that lasted two days about how we needed to improve the culture and personal development of the players.”
“Even in this meeting I didn’t want to say ‘we have to do this and that’ as the knowledge lies within our coaches. They have to develop the place. It was a huge moment for our academy. The Uefa coaching courses in Germany are top, but they aren’t the only important thing. Coaches need to be social workers and have pedagogical skills as they’re the first port of call to the kids.
“Now our coaching staff have a meeting with the club’s psychologists and social workers every Monday. We went to speak with people at Bochum University about how to work on resilience, identification, humility, decision-making and self-confidence. Now we model ourselves on these values, with reiterated messages forced into the boys.
“It’s not only coaches we want to develop here, but scouts, fitness workers, physios and video analysts. There are 15 people who worked within our youth department who are now working in the professional game. In our own club we have an athletic coach and two physios who graduated to the first team and 12 others have gone on to other clubs. We can’t only educate players but everybody that enters the building.”
As we leave the training centre to go across town to Signal Iduna Park – Germany’s largest stadium – we pass the admin offices and Ricken points to a young member of staff: “That’s Patrick Fritsch,” he says. A few years ago Fritsch was expected to be Dortmund’s next big star. Thomas Tuchel was “a huge fan” and said the youngster would “have no problems having a huge career at the top”.
However, the defender suffered a heartbreaking cruciate ligament injury that ended his playing career. The club responded by employing him in the marketing department and putting him through two years of education. “Patty now leads workshops to the current academy players. It’s so important for us to take care of our people.”
The Guardian Sport
