The last time Borussia Dortmund had enjoyed an end-of-season run-in as successful as this was that season. Nearly two years on Niko Kovac and company didn’t quite lay the ghost of 2023 but began to definitively draw a line under the fallout from it. On this occasion BVB faced what should have been a straightforward final day task at home and made it so. Where they had been cowed by nerves against Mainz in the last game of 2022-23 and let the Bundesliga slip through their collective fingers, this time they were ready to receive an unexpected opportunity.
This time there was the right to a celebration, and there was the feeling that it had been earned. Pointing out that Saturday’s final-day win over already-relegated Holstein Kiel perhaps salvaged the bare minimum – a top-four place – from this season would be to miss the point and to disregard the context. BVB had been languishing in 11th with just eight games to go, 10 points adrift of the Champions League places and with the prospect of any European football at all next season looking like a tough ask. If they had been able to take advantage of Freiburg and Eintracht Frankfurt (who began the day in fourth and third places respectively) playing each other on the final day, they had manufactured any luck of which they were the beneficiaries by winning seven and drawing one – away at Bayern – of the last eight, beating direct concurrents like Freiburg, Mainz and Borussia Mönchengladbach along the way, as well as winning at Leverkusen last week.
