Recapping The Borussia Dortmund Transfers
As much as some of you don’t want to admit it, every transfer window makes Borussia Dortmund fans nervous. The summer of 2013, we lost Mario Götze to Bayern Munich, with Robert Lewandowski leaving the following year to the same destination. After Lewandowski had left he was replaced by the rather disastrous signing of Ciro Immobile.
The summer of 2015 was a “cleaning of house” in the departures of players who were popular during the glory days of Jürgen Klopp, with Jakub Błaszczykowski and Kevin Großkreutz being just a few. The summers of 2015 and 2016 saw “Tuchel transfers” like Julian Weigl, Ousmane Dembele, and Emre Mor admitted to the squad to fill the gaping void that existed after Gündogan, Mkhitaryan, and Hummels left.
Now that I’ve made you all depressed and possibly thinking about how much you miss your exes, it’s time to look at the present.
Mahmoud Dahoud
In March, Borussia Dortmund announced that they had completed the signing of Mahmoud Dahoud from Borussia Mönchengladbach. Seen as the box-to-box midfielder to truly replace Gündogan, he has a more attacking mind than Julian Weigl and will be interesting to see how Peter Bosz will deploy the two young midfielders. Having registered three goals and seven assists in all competitions per WhoScored, he’ll be a significant presence in our midfield and will only get better in the years to come.
Ömer Toprak
Another early signing for Borussia Dortmund was Ömer Toprak from Bayer Leverkusen. The 27-year-old defender has been the main focal point of Leverkusen’s defense for a few seasons, and his experience will be valuable in a very young squad.
Most likely we will see Toprak, Sokratis, and Bartra rotate in a formation with two center backs as Peter Bosz favors the 4-3-3. However, if Bosz continues to play with three centre-backs and two wingbacks like Tuchel was doing at the end of the season, then we can expect to see all three of them on the pitch together, forming the brick wall Dortmund fans have been longing for years.
Dan-Axel Zagadou
Another addition to Der BVB’s defense is the free transfer of Dan-Axel Zagadou, an 18-yecentre-backterback from Paris Saint-Germain. He has 8 caps to his name with France’s U18 national team.
A long-term project, he will most likely be pretty far down in the depth chart with the likes of Sven Bender and Matthias Ginter ahead of him after the first-choice starters, but we might get to see him make a few appearances in the DFB tournament and possibly in the Bundesliga as well. And the depth chart could change, as Matthias Ginter hasn’t been performing for Dortmund and other clubs seeming to be interested in him.
With the new Bosz in town, we’ll have to wait and see.
Maximilian Philipp
Borussia Dortmund’s most recent signing is Maximilian Philipp from Freiburg for a reported fee of €20m. The attacking midfielder enjoyed a successful season last year where he scored 9 goals and assisted 2 more according to WhoScored.
He’s a rather versatile player and can operate as an attacking midfielder as well as anywhere on the front line. He’ll come in handy when Dortmund gets stricken with injuries as usual and they need players to fill in the starting spots.
Promoting Jacob Brunn Larsen
The Dortmund hierarchy has also seen fit to promote Jacob Bruun Larsen, Dutch academy product, to the first team. Personally, I haven’t seen him play so there’s not a lot I can accurately say about him, but I’m excited to see an academy product be successful. My hope is that he will connect with the rest of the team quickly. Ideally he will already have a good chemistry with Christian Pulisic and Felix Passlack, the other academy graduates.
Well, that’s the road so far in the transfer market. Who do you think will be the next player to put on the black and yellow shirt? Who will leave?