Erling Haaland, playing under Matthias Sammer and more: Interview with former Borussia Dortmund defender André Bergdølmo
BM: Moving on to your career, I guess you would forgive me if I ask you a provocative question. What went wrong at Borussia Dortmund? How come Bergdølmo didn’t become the new Stefan Reuter or Matthias Sammer at BVB?
AB: I would say the issue at BVB was the period we were going through, there were financial problems as you know and the squad was not what you see today. When I was at Ajax in training, I had Zlatan Ibrahimovic against me every time and that was unbelievable. You know when we trained and played 4 against 4, or 5 against 5 I always set up against the best players, players like Litmanen, Sneijder, Van der Vaart. It’s unbelievable for a young player, you outperform yourself and grow in terms of skills. With BVB at the time we were going through a financial transition. We had missed Europe and there were key injuries it was not the time, nor the place but BVB will always be an amazing club. But those were different times than what you see now.
Let me tell you one thing about Zlatan one day in training, he said to me ‘4 years from now, I’m going to be the best striker in the world’.
BM: Did you believe him?
AB: Absolutely. The way he impacts all the teams he has been with, Barcelona, AC Milan, Manchester United, Inter, it’s unbelievable. He was 18 or 19 when he came to Ajax. From day one on the training pitch, he was unbelievable. But in the games, he struggled a little bit because it’s different than in training but I knew Zlatan would be a special player – and I have been right.