Who replaces the big hero?
BVB could not have received more terrible message
BVB could not have received more terrible message
04/08/2025, 6:40 a.m.
Season out for Nico Schlotterbeck: The defense chief of Borussia Dortmund has suffered a meniscal tear in the left knee and will be missing from BVB for months. This is very bad news for coach Niko Kovac. Who are the options for Schlotterbeck?
To count the big winners from Borussia Dortmund this season, you don’t even need a hand. The team has been busy with itself for months and somehow tries to keep the damaged damage as small as possible. A man where the players could always hold on was Nico Schlotterbeck. He not only helped out when it got going again, he finally shot fantastic corners and always kept in touch with the passionate audience. How many times had you already seen this season on how he started a heroic gräsche and then pushed himself up and the stadium. It woke up again when it was once again desperate to this barely to be grasped.
Now this giant falls, it does not go to the ground for a tackle, but has knees. His meniscus is broken and with it his season. The central defender will no longer be able to play. No longer in the league, where the recently stable BVB still wants to make the qualification for the Champions League clear, and certainly not in the Champions League, where the black yellow this Wednesday evening (9 p.m. at DAZN and in the live ticker at ntv.de) Meet FC Barcelona in the quarter-final first leg. On perhaps the largest force in European football. Super coach Hansi Flick has shaped a team from a wild bunch that is so difficult to defend: because of Lamine Yamal, because of Raphinha, because of Robert Lewandowski.
According to “Ruhr Nachrichten”, Schlotterbeck suffered his serious injury to player replacement training on Sunday, and had to be driven off the pitch with a golf cart under great pain. “Nico’s failure hits us very hard,” said Dortmund’s sports director Sebastian Kehl. “He is a very important part of our team and convinced this season with consistently good performances.” The club did not provide any information about the type of treatment. The 25-year-old will most likely also miss the final tournament of the Nations League (June 4th to 8th) in Munich and Stuttgart. What will become with the following club World Cup in the USA is still unclear.
Who regulates things next to Emre Can?
A Schlotterbeck would have done well, it would have been indispensable. But he’s not there. We are looking for a new hero. Sporadically, other players took over this roles. Sometimes it was Jamie Gitten’s pumped up to a world sensation, but then fell into a gigantic form crisis. Sometimes it was Maxi Beier, Karim Adeyemi or Pascal Groß or he tireless right -back Julian Rerson. But none of them constant and not as an irrefutable instance in the last row anyway. The new hero is now needed there.
Maybe it will be Emre Can. Like his team, the national player did not always have it easy this season. The fans were desperate about him when he had acted too fan-hunted again and with a touch of too much laissez-faire. Especially when he had played in midfield as a six. This position is now in other hands. This is a good thing for Can, he slipped further backwards, into the central defense, to the side of Schlotterbeck. There he regulated things. And did it well. It will be more important to him now. And on his next man.
Is the time of Waldemar Anton finally coming? Last summer he moved from VfB Stuttgart to Dortmund. He came as one of the best central defenders in the Bundesliga, was in the European Championship squad. But on the way to Strobelallee he lost and his shape. Anton never became the pillar he was at VfB. When he defended the biggest stars, for example in Leverkusen’s super striker Victor Boniface and completely took him out of the game. The fact that the Swabians were stormed into the Champions League was also due to Anton’s uncompromising work. In Dortmund they long for this stability, this charisma and calm. With all the good values, for example 66 percent won duels, he never really arrived.
Is now the hour of Niklas Süle?
“My personal expectations have not yet fulfilled, unfortunately I have not yet fulfilled it,” said the 28-year-old only a few days ago in an interview with Transfermarkt.de. “Of course I was already injured three times this season, that’s a lot for my conditions – but that shouldn’t be an excuse,” Anton continued. He was brought before the season “to take on a leadership role” he said: “I try to fill them out – even in phases in which things are not going well.” Now would be the best time.
Also for Niklas Süle. Its time in Dortmund is even more jerky than that of Anton. The central defender is still considered to be high, but it simply does not keep it under control. Coach Niko Kovac, who already knows him from the time together in Munich, was very much looking forward to Süle, but there has been no question of you so far. The 29-year-old also fought injuries again this season, but recently he was regularly in the squad. When he was allowed to play against FSV Mainz 05 again, he was substituted in the 79th minute, he injured himself. It is questionable whether he is fit enough to see an option against Barça.