It was heartwarming – and not just the part with Jakub Blaszczykowski, Lukasz Piszczek and Nuri Sahin playing on the Signal Iduna Park pitch against a hundred young children, which has smothered social media in the last week. The farewell match that filled international weekend didn’t just allow Borussia Dortmund to pay homage to their two Polish stalwarts, but to a whole generation whose achievements grow in stature with every passing year.
They were all there for what has become known as Tschüssikowski; Lucas Barrios, Kevin Grosskreutz, Marcel Schmelzer and the most important of them all. Jürgen Klopp was back coaching at Westfalen, the famous “Pöhler” (local slang roughly meaning “street baller”) cap atop his head. A day of celebration for Blaszczykowski and Piszczek reminded everybody what BVB had achieved in 2011 and 2012, only a handful of years on from financial near-ruin, with little money by elite-level standards and little experience of mixing it with the top bracket. The excitement that Klopp and his young players brought here in those years was palpable all over again.
