Marco Rose seems distant. Not just physically, as he literally stayed in the background at the exuberant end of the season at Signal Iduna Park. In front, directly in front of the south, there are other people celebrating.
The club legends Michael Zorc and Marcel Schmelzer are just being given a fitting farewell. Departures like Erling Haaland or Axel Witsel get their moments in front of the “Yellow Wall”.
It is appropriate for the coach to leave the stage to those actors. The mood is great after the last competitive game of the season against Hertha BSC, which wasn’t really to be expected after the sobering season. The blazing midday sun and the task accomplished in the 2-1 win against the relegation candidates did the rest.
While fans and team enjoy the moment in black and yellow symbiosis, Rose seems to be somewhere else. He is the team’s shadow, a silent observer of the scene, only occasionally speaking to his assistants. Does he seem to know what is about to happen?
Just six days later, the man who was only brought in before the season from league competition Borussia Mönchengladbach was released. “This day is not an easy one for all of us,” BVB Managing Director Hans-Joachim Watzke is quoted as saying in the club’s announcement. “After a season that was unsatisfactory for various reasons, we had to realize that we didn’t get the most out of our opportunities in many areas,” it continues.
Champions-League-Aus in the group phase, the second European chance in the European Cup is negligently thrown away against Glasgow Rangers. In the DFB Cup, the end stop is just as early.
In the league, Bayern have become champions for the tenth time in a row. You can’t really blame Rose for that, but he wasn’t able to narrow the gap to Primus either, despite the mood of crisis in Munich in the meantime.
And despite a strong squad! Before the season, Borussia finally saw itself ready for the changing of the guard in German football. And with Rose, BVB installed a highly praised young coach who even caused additional euphoria.
The fact that his credit seems to be used up so quickly is strange and shows a distorted self-perception in the club. Thomas Tuchel, Lucien Favre, now Rose. With each of these names, it was said at the end that they had not “made the most of our possibilities”. In Dortmund there is a big gap between claim and reality.
Yes, Rose didn’t “get the maximum out of what we could do”. Firstly, which team can do that in a year? Secondly, does missing the maximum have to mean dismissal? Is there no alternative to the football business?
jain The problem in Dortmund, or Rose’s problem in Dortmund, is precisely that alternative. Since Rose’s first day, it has loomed over his tenure like an evil shadow… Edin Terzic.
The interim coach from 2021 was the celebrated cup hero and brought the trophy back into the pot last summer. But he was not allowed to continue because BVB had long since decided on the 39-year-old from Gladbach.
Despite good offers, Terzic stayed in his homeland, got a new job and from now on was the destiny of the new coach. His name was mentioned with every minor crisis that arose, with every defeat, with every blunder. Rose never had a real chance.
Whether Terzic will actually be the successor is irrelevant at first. His mere presence caused doubts about the current coach to spread like weeds.
Zorc’s successor in the position of sports director could hardly hide this a week before the last matchday. “As of today, I assume that Rose will be on the sidelines in the coming season,” said Sebastian Kehl after the 3-1 win in Fürth.
It was initially interpreted as an unfortunate wording, Kehl himself rowed back a day later in a one-two. Sky expert Lothar Matthäus already suspected that Kehl was “simply too honest for a moment”. Especially against the background that it is known “that BVB advisor Matthias Sammer is a big fan of Edin Terzic, sees Rose critically and Boss Watzke gives a lot to Sammer’s judgement”. Kehl therefore “did not just utter the sentence by accident. There’s a lot of truth in that.”
He should be right. The fact that Rose will be released in Dortmund has long been discussed there. The result of a joint “intensive season analysis” on Thursday with Kehl, Watzke, Sammer, Zorc and Rose is his dismissal. Like I said, Rose never had a chance.
1 FC Kaiserslautern – Dynamo Dresden
05/20/2022 | 8:30 p.m
