Erling Haaland, playing under Matthias Sammer and more: Interview with former Borussia Dortmund defender André Bergdølmo

BM: As someone who played for some of Europe’s biggest clubs, what does football mean for you?

AB: You know, you miss everything when you stop playing football, I was so fortunate to play at the top level, but it’s the same feeling wherever you play. That day you stop playing football, and you have to do something else, the only thing missing is that feeling, the dressing room, the community, it’s everything, playing football is about one thing, winning – one hundred percent.

More from Dortmund History

• Season Awards: The Highlights of Borussia Dortmund’s 2022/2023 Journey
• Borussia Dortmund’s five best performances of the 2022/23 season
• Borussia Dortmund’s five recent expensive transfer flops
• Seven greatest moments of the Jürgen Klopp era at Borussia Dortmund
• Roman Weidenfeller: An all time Borussia Dortmund great

And there’s nothing better to wake up in the morning on a match day, eat a good breakfast, take a walk, come to the stadium the lights are on, you hear the fans, and then you go out there and you put in a great performance and you win together. There’s nothing in my life that I can compare to that feeling, nothing.

But if you lose it is hell. In football heaven and hell are so close and at the top it’s even worse. I remember one game, the Champions League qualification against Bruges in Belgium. We had played 0-0 in the first leg and the feeling in the the BVB team in the changing room was ‘no problem, we take them at home’.

So it came to the second leg in Dortmund and again after 90 it was 0-0 and Michael Zorc said ‘you took all the penalities at Ajax, can you take one today?’ I said absolutely, but no sooner had I started running up to take it than I started thinking about how I would celebrate? That is deadly, I missed and the next day in the newspaper in Norway it said, ‘€15 million penalty miss for Bergdølmo,’ I was devastated because BVB were out. You have to be able to handle these situations otherwise you won’t make it as a player.

BM: You have played in many European countries, just how big is the Revierderby?

AB: Yeah, the home games again Schalke, the atmosphere is just extraordinary. It means a lot to to beat Schalke, you know Everton – Liverpool, Rangers – Celtic, derbies are huge all over the world. The Revierderby is the biggest one I have played in. And you cannot lose. The fans in Dortmund don’t care how you play. But you have to win.

BM: You played in an era in the Bundesliga with some outstanding players. Who was the hardest opponent on the pitch for you at the time?

AB: That was Roy Makaay or Michael Ballack. They were absolutely two of the best players at the time. But you know in Germany, the players were on a different level to Norway. I remember playing against a third-tier team in the DFB Pokal and we went in thinking we would win 10-0 and in the end, we won by one goal and I thought these guys are not much worse than me. In Germany, the players were really fit, and they were really good.

I felt like we were playing against a Bundesliga team when we played against lower league teams, the fitness level is really impressive, and Erling will benefit from that.