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Past and Present Weighing Heaving on Borussia Dortmund

FILE PHOTO: Soccer Football - Bundesliga - Borussia Dortmund v VfL Bochum - Signal Iduna Park, Dortmund, Germany - September 27, 2024 Borussia Dortmund coach Nuri Sahin reacts REUTERS/Leon Kuegeler
FILE PHOTO: Soccer Football - Bundesliga - Borussia Dortmund v VfL Bochum - Signal Iduna Park, Dortmund, Germany - September 27, 2024 Borussia Dortmund coach Nuri Sahin reacts REUTERS/Leon Kuegeler
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Past and Present Weighing Heaving on Borussia Dortmund

FILE PHOTO: Soccer Football - Bundesliga - Borussia Dortmund v VfL Bochum - Signal Iduna Park, Dortmund, Germany - September 27, 2024 Borussia Dortmund coach Nuri Sahin reacts REUTERS/Leon Kuegeler
FILE PHOTO: Soccer Football - Bundesliga - Borussia Dortmund v VfL Bochum - Signal Iduna Park, Dortmund, Germany - September 27, 2024 Borussia Dortmund coach Nuri Sahin reacts REUTERS/Leon Kuegeler

It’s been more than 10 years since Borussia Dortmund won back-to-back titles in the Bundesliga.
There have been minor successes — German Cup wins in 2017 and 2021, and reaching the Champions League final last season — but they’ve served only to raise the long-suffering Dortmund fans’ expectations by showing the team’s potential.
Despite the return of former player Nuri Sahin as coach, this season already seems to be following the well-worn path of the last few, The Associated Press reported.
Before the international break, Dortmund routed Scottish champion Celtic 7-1 in the Champions League, then followed with a meek 2-1 loss at Union Berlin in the Bundesliga. Dortmund has won only half of its six German league games so far. A 5-1 loss at Stuttgart had already put the team’s league ambitions in perspective.
Sahin believes it’s too early for alarm.
“To start doubting our path after six match days would be fatal. And we won’t do that,” Sahin said this week. “And despite criticism, it is my job to always offer solutions, to show the solutions, and to improve things together with the guys.”
Sahin said he had no room for any doubts.
“We are very, very confident about the path we are taking as a club and we will follow it to the end and be successful. I am sure of that.”
Sahin is the seventh coach to take charge of Dortmund since Jürgen Klopp stood down in 2015. It was Klopp who led the team to back-to-back titles in 2011 and 2012, then runner-up finishes behind Bayern Munich in 2013 and 2014, before his team’s form unraveled during the 2014-15 season.
Dortmund never recovered amid ongoing questions about the team's mentality. The closest it came to ending Bayern’s dominance was in 2023, when it squandered the chance of winning the Bundesliga on the final day during Edin Terzić’s second stint in charge.
Terzić resigned after last season’s Champions League final defeat to Real Madrid, saying he wanted to make way for someone else to begin a new era at the club – a reference to Klopp’s mostly successful seven-year stint in charge.
Red Bull’s recent announcement that Klopp is to join the company to oversee its soccer clubs’ development has added to Dortmund fans’ pain.
Another former coach, Thomas Tuchel, who won the German Cup in 2017, was appointed England coach on Wednesday.
The 36-year-old Sahin — Terzić’s former assistant — faces a tall order to restore Dortmund’s status as Bayern’s biggest challenger in the league. Other clubs have assumed that mantle, with Bayer Leverkusen becoming the one to finally end Bayern’s 11-year run as champion by claiming its first Bundesliga title after a remarkable unbeaten campaign last season. Stuttgart and Leipzig also both finished ahead of Dortmund last season.
Summer signings are yet to settle in. The arrivals of star Guinea forward Serhou Guirassy and Germany defender Waldmar Anton from Stuttgart have yet to improve the team’s attack or defense, while the 33-year-old Pascal Groß from Brighton can’t be seen as a long-term solution to the team’s vulnerability.
Off the field, there have been reports of disharmony between Dortmund’s new managing director for sport Lars Ricken, sporting director Sebastian Kehl and team planner Sven Mislintat. Chief executive Hans-Joachim “Aki” Watzke is stepping down at the end of the year.
One of Watzke’s last major contributions was the signing of a sponsorship deal with an arms manufacturer before the Champions League final, leading to protests from Dortmund fans this season.
Dortmund next hosts promoted St. Pauli in the Bundesliga on Friday, before another tussle with Madrid in the Champions League on Tuesday. Madrid won their final 2-0 in June.

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Mbappe's Golden-boy Image Takes A Hit Amid Negative Headlines

Mbappe in action for France last month - AFP
Mbappe in action for France last month - AFP
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Mbappe's Golden-boy Image Takes A Hit Amid Negative Headlines

Mbappe in action for France last month - AFP
Mbappe in action for France last month - AFP

Kylian Mbappe is hoping his recent move to Real Madrid will take his already glittering career on the pitch to new heights, but the French superstar has become embroiled in off-field difficulties in recent months.

In an ideal world, the 25-year-old former Paris Saint-Germain striker would have been able to focus fully on settling in Madrid after he moved to the Spanish capital on a five-year deal during the summer just finished.

Instead, as well as being hampered by fitness problems, Mbappe has been locked in a bitter financial dispute with his old club and is now cited as the suspect in a rape investigation according to reports in Sweden, according to AFP.

Mbappe has dismissed those reports as "fake news" and is hoping to win his battle with PSG over what he claims amounts to 55 million euros ($60m) in unpaid wages and bonuses from last season.

Nevertheless, the negative headlines are a blow to the player's image and remove some of the aura around a young man who has become an icon in his home country and is a global sporting superstar.

When Mbappe emerged as a teenager at Monaco almost a decade ago, he stood out because of his precocious talent but also thanks to his remarkable communication skills.

Rather than being fazed by the media spotlight, Mbappe was clearly at ease in front of the cameras and spoke with the maturity and assurance of someone considerably older.

He was a World Cup winner at 19 and went on to become the all-time top scorer at PSG, the local club of the boy from Bondy in the Paris suburbs.

In March 2023, a few months after scoring a stunning hat-trick in France's World Cup final defeat by Lionel Messi's Argentina, he was named captain of the national team by coach Didier Deschamps.

That seemed a natural choice given his status in the team and in the country in general, but his position as skipper meant the decision to rest him for France's UEFA Nations League matches this month was controversial.

Mbappe had picked up a thigh injury in late September, a minor problem but one that suggested giving him a break would be beneficial in the long run.

"We need to put the player's interests first, without putting him into difficulty," Deschamps said of that decision, referring to Mbappe's relationship with his new club.

But as France's sporting press debated whether Mbappe's temporary absence from the squad was justified or a sign of a lack of commitment to the French cause, the player himself travelled to Stockholm for a short break with members of his entourage.

Swedish newspapers Aftonbladet and Expressen, and public broadcaster SVT, have since reported that he is under investigation for rape, after an alleged incident in a hotel on October 10.

A Swedish prosecutor confirmed on Tuesday that a rape investigation had been opened but did not mention Mbappe's name.

Meanwhile Mbappe, whose career is managed by his mother Fayza Lamari, has taken his financial row with PSG to a French league committee.

He is trying to recover 55 million euros comprised of several months' unpaid wages and a signing-on fee, money PSG claimed he agreed to waive if he departed for free at the end of last season.

Mbappe even intimated on Monday that there was a link between the rape report and the wrangle with his old team, where he spent seven years.

"It's becoming so predictable, on the eve of the hearing, as if by chance," he wrote on X on Monday.

His unhappy divorce from PSG, which saw him left out of the team on numerous occasions in the second half of last season after he announced his intention to leave, surely contributed to a disappointing European Championship with France.

Mbappe suffered a broken nose in France's opening game at Euro 2024 in June and only scored one goal, a penalty in a group-stage draw with Poland, before Les Bleus lost in the semi-finals.

He looked some way short of peak physical form and is taking his time to settle in Madrid, even if he has seven goals in his first 11 appearances.

One recent moment seemed to capture the change in attitude towards Mbappe in his home country, as he was loudly booed by Lille supporters when introduced as a substitute for Real in a Champions League game earlier this month.

Such a welcome for an opposition player may not be unusual, but it contrasted sharply with the acclaim with which he was received around France in the aftermath of the last World Cup.