10 years ago: BVB are champions – that’s what Kagawa, Großkreutz & Co. do today

View of the 2011/12 squad

April 21, 2012: Borussia Dortmund welcomes Borussia Mönchengladbach to Saturday’s top game on the 32nd Bundesliga matchday at their home Westfalenstadion. After 23 minutes, Ivan Perisic heads in a free-kick from Marcel Schmelzer to take the lead, in the second half Shinji Kagawa increases on a pass from Robert Lewandowski – Marco Reus and Co. can no longer turn the ball around for the “foals”. Shortly before half past eight in the evening, Jürgen Klopp’s team made it, the title defense is perfect, record champions FC Bayern, defeated three times this season, cheated again. Almost ten years to the day before Munich can win their tenth championship in a row against the black and yellow of all things, BVB is at its peak. Transfermarkt takes a look at the squad at the time and what became of it.

Because, even if another highlight for the black and yellow should follow in the following year with reaching the Champions League final at Wembley against Bayern, the double 2011/12 is at the same time a bit the beginning of the end of this fantastically put together team . It would take a few years before the next important title followed, winning the DFB Cup in 2017.

With Nuri Sahin, a top performer from the Borussia champions, had already taken the next step in the previous summer – 2021 – and switched to Real Madrid. The sale of Shinji Kagawa to Manchester United in the summer of 2012 for what was then a club record of 16 million euros more or less heralded the threat of a sell-out in the following years, even if Lukasz Piszczek attributed this more to Mario Götze’s move to Bayern Munich in 2013.

In the “Kicker meets DAZN” podcast, the long-time BVB defender said that it was “the biggest break” for this team, which he described as being ideally put together in terms of character and playing class: “Because we were shown that we would not play together forever.” In addition to Kagawa, important players for the team structure such as Florian Kringe and Antônio da Silva left BVB in 2012, Lucas Barrios and Perisic left to get more playing time elsewhere.

The architect of success, coach Klopp, often sang the praises of his team at the time, saying, among other things: “It was so easy with this team. All outstanding guys.” Today’s successful Liverpool FC coach, who is still in contact with most of the players in the 2011/12 squad, once described them as “a class full of highly intelligent people” because there is just so much on the pitch succeeded, as much training was implemented.

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In addition to Klopp’s work, the good nose of the scouting department around Sven Mislintat and the ultimately completed transfers of sporting director Michael Zorc, who is retiring this year, stood out. Zorc once described Klopp, whom he brought from Mainz in 2008, as the best transfer of his career, “because he shaped an era with us that is and was unique and is difficult to repeat.” During the championship years, professionals like Neven Subotic, Mats Hummels, Sven Bender, Lewandowski or Kagawa all cost less than 5 million euros. The most expensive player in the 2011/12 squad was Ilkay Gündogan, who came from Nuremberg as Sahin’s successor for 5.5 million euros.

Later, BVB should get a whopping transfer bonus with most of these players – or in the case of Lewandowski, benefit from his skills for at least two more years. Only a few players from this squad remained with BVB for a long time, especially after the end of the Klopp era. On the following pages, TM describes what happened next for the pros.

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