After four consecutive defeats

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After four consecutive defeats in competition, Borussia Dortmund part ways with coach Nuri Şahin. The club confirmed the information from “Bild” and “Sky” on Wednesday morning. The coach and team were reportedly informed of the decision that evening at the Bologna hotel, after which the 36-year-old said goodbye to the team. BVB lost 2-1 in the Champions League. Şahin took over as head coach of the Black and Yellows at the start of the season and scored an average of 1.48 points in 27 games.

Sports director Lars Ricken explained: “We really appreciate Nuri Şahin and his work, we wanted a long collaboration and hoped until the end that we would reach a turning point in sport together. After four consecutive defeats, due to only one victory in the last nine matches and as we are currently tenth in the Bundesliga standings, we have unfortunately lost confidence in the ability to achieve our sporting goals in the current constellation. This decision also hurts me personally, but it was no longer avoidable after the Bologna match.

Şahin had already realistically assessed his situation after the match. “It’s clear: you have to win matches and we lost the match again. It’s now four games in a row that we’ve lost, » he said, adding: « If a change of coach solves all the problems, solves all the secondary battlegrounds, then it’s not a problem at all. issue. »

This is the fourth defeat in a row – there is still no victory this calendar year. BVB had already lost with Şahin in the Bundesliga against Bayer Leverkusen (2:3), Holstein Kiel (2:4) and Eintracht Frankfurt (0:2). Werder Bremen awaits in the Bundesliga on Saturday (3:30 p.m./Sky).

Internal power struggles within the BVB management team could make the search for a coach more difficult

But things are not only brewing at BVB at the coaching position, but also at management level. “It’s just about this club finally finding peace and calming down. “Let the club be successful again, let us not have secondary theaters of war,” Şahin said in Bologna. Internal power struggles within the management team around Ricken, sports director Sebastian Kehl, advisor Matthias Sammer, team planner Sven Mislintat and club boss Hans-Joachim Watzke have been shaping the picture for months .

The search for a successor for Şahin promises to be all the more difficult. Some candidates, like Roger Schmidt, would show no interest in getting involved due to differences within sports management. The question also arises whether BVB would only look for a short-term option or a long-term option. Names from Erik ten Hag to Niko Kovac to Urs Fischer haunt the Dortmund region.

Şahin was BVB’s eighth coach since Klopp

Since the end of the Jürgen Klopp era almost ten years ago, the coaching position at the Revierklub has been a constant work in progress. Şahin is already the eighth coach since 2015 to fail following Klopp’s departure from Dortmund. Among them were renowned players like Thomas Tuchel, Lucien Favre and Marco Rose.

After the departure of current Leipzig head coach Rose in the summer of 2022, BVB has had Edin Terzic and more recently Şahin as coaches with a strong connection to Dortmund, but without much prior experience. Terzic was an assistant coach and youth coach at BVB for years before taking over as head coach at Dortmund in December 2020 for six months and then again for two years after Rose left.

Although the BVB under his command only lost the championship on the last day of 2023 and reached the Champions League final against Real Madrid (0-2) last summer, the club and Terzic are separated. His former assistant coach Şahin, who only returned to BVB in this role in January 2024, took over his youth club, with high praise from the management, where he had already joined BVB at the age twelve years old and for which he had made his professional career. debut at the age of 16.