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It was a wise decision for Borussia Dortmund officials to pull the tightrope and fire Lucien Favre, because the BVB stalemate under the Swiss coach was unraveling recently. A comment from SPOX editor Jochen Tittmar.
At the end of November, Michael Zorc confirmed Borussia Dortmund a “very good general development”. The sports director said: “Greed is there with the troops.” Shortly afterwards, BVB lost to 1. FC Köln, who had not won 18 matches, and coach Lucien Favre was fired 15 days later.
It is the right decision of the club, because the critical period of observation should not only cover the development of the last 15 days with a single victory in five competitive matches. Rather, it is about Favre’s sporting stalemate for more than a year. And even this collapsed more and more recently.
First of all: Favre was undoubtedly certified as “excellent work” by Dortmund Managing Director Hans-Joachim Watzke. The Swiss took over Borussia 2018 in a delicate phase, when the Westphalians had just experienced a season of terror with two exhausted coaches and even a striker was missing from the squad. From the beginning, Favre managed to build a strong team that played very efficient football and became the fall champion with a nine-point advantage.
Favre also managed to further develop the players. More than two runner-up championships were not possible. That is a good result in itself, corresponding to the BVB’s ambitious claim. But the truth is also that the two second places were taken in seasons in which the worst rival, Bayern Munich, stumbled and would have been crowded. Being there at exactly that point is part of the understanding of the German club, which is second best in terms of finances and personnel.
Favre and BVB: Regularly the same pattern
So what doesn’t quite fit the picture is Watzke’s addition to the official press release that Favre had done this excellent job “in the last two and a half years.” Because with the increase in tenure from 63 years, BVB displayed the same error-prone patterns with increasing regularity, the accumulation of which now likely led to a rethinking among those responsible.
Despite Favre’s considerable score with a team that grew stronger each season, Borussia lacked consistency under him, resulting in constant positive development. Of course, this also includes the bare facts: twice with Favre the last sixteen of the Champions League and DFB Cup ended.
More serious, however, was that as supposedly the first challenger, he not only lost in four games against FC Bayern, in some cases significantly, but also suffered a total of eight defeats against clearly weaker teams. When things got tough within a game and unexpected resistance had to be overcome, Favre’s team often lacked the means to improve things.
Why there was almost no alternative to firing Favre
Phases so good to very good, which existed even in the current season, see the strong start of the season with very few goals conceded, constantly alternating with the next mini crises (see here the bankruptcy in Augsburg during that strong start to the season ). For the full two and a half years, Favre managed to calm the entire fragile structure of Borussia Dortmund in a sporting way, but also very rarely due to his very humble nature.
In addition to this lack of stability, it has recently become increasingly clear in the pure core business how dependent BVB is on the individual quality of individual players. Above all, it is worth mentioning the striker Erling Haaland and the team’s best footballer, Raphael Guerreiro.
If these players weren’t on the field, there wasn’t a compelling plan on how to defeat the opponents. Instead, appearances were predictable and easy to see. As the players lacked more and more passion, spirit and, against Stuttgart, in some cases even will, and the team continued to lose ground in the table, there was almost no alternative to the decision of the Dortmund officials against Favre.
Lucien Favre: his record at BVB
| competition | Games | Siege | to draw | Defeats |
| Bundesliga | 79 | fifty | 14 | fifteen |
| DFL Cup | 7 | 5 | – | 2 |
| DFL Super Cup | 2 | 1 | – | 1 |
| Champions League | 22 | 12 | 3 | 7 |
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