News summary
Borussia Dortmund posted a net loss of €21.7m on Friday.
Dortmund's revenue slid to €460.5m last season, more than sixty million down on the year before. The loss of Champions League broadcasting revenue caused almost all of it.
An exit before the last 16 of the Champions League cost the club €58.7m in television money on its own.
Two things kept the television hole from becoming a crater.
The wage bill fell by €8.4m, while net transfer income of fifty-nine million covered the rest of the hole.
Lars Ricken expects a return to profit this financial year. The forecast tops out at €10m.
Ricken spent a chunk of Friday talking about an opponent. Jamal Musiala has been diagnosed with seizures after collapsing on the pitch twice.
Ricken told Bild the pictures of Musiala had been frightening to watch:
"We at Borussia Dortmund wish him all the best and a speedy recovery. When we play against Bayern, we want to measure ourselves against the best and of course hope that he will be back on the pitch."
Musiala misses tonight's game. Serge Gnabry is out too, four months on from a muscle tear, while Lennart Karl has a thigh injury.
Daniel Schlager referees his first Supercup at a ground that sold out weeks ago.
Transfer news
Héctor Fort has said no to Real Sociedad and no to Roma. Dortmund is where he wants to be.
Sky Germany named everyone BVB tried before Fort. Josh Acheampong was one of them.
Chelsea would only sell Acheampong permanently while BVB wanted a straight loan. Marcus Pedersen was the second name Sky gave.
Pedersen is already behind Julian Ryerson in the pecking order for Norway, so nobody at Brackel fancied creating the same situation at Dortmund.
Barcelona are asking up to €20m for Fort. Something nearer half that is thought possible if the sell-on clause is steep enough.
Talks have drifted towards a loan for Fort since Friday's accounts landed.
Ethan Nwaneri, though not a full-back, is the other topic of conversation.
Dortmund have done significant work on Nwaneri, a report said on Friday. Arsenal will allow a loan with no buy option.
RB Leipzig have asked about Nwaneri too. The window shuts on the 1st September and Kovac still has one senior right-back.
BVB Buzz opinion
Friday's €21.7m loss won't overshadow tonight's result.
Ricken has sold this summer's recruitment as a philosophy: hungry young players inside a frame of experienced ones. Friday's filing reframes it as a matter of arithmetic.
Strip out the transfer income, and that arithmetic becomes a problem. BVB Buzz went through why the selling never stops.
Die Schwarzgelben have been the sharpest sellers in Europe for a decade, with the proceeds coming back as teenagers who can impact the team as they develop.
Konstantinos Karetsas is one of those teenagers. Go and watch him.
It does mean the next bid for Felix Nmecha will be harder to turn down than the club's public line suggests.
A win against Bayern today in the Supercup could set up an interesting season. Perhaps BVB are a little closer to Die Roten than most people think.
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