How to measure a season
By: Steven | August 1st, 2007
It’s an interesting question: how do you measure a season? What must happen for it to be called a success? What constitutes a failure? Is merely finishing one place higher than last season enough to deem a season a successful one? Perhaps, but that’s just not going to cut it here.
By all means, last season was an awful one for Borussia Dortmund. At one point, we were staring relegation square in the eye. But a few wins stringed together with an exclamation point against Schalke — only to see the season end on a low note to Leverkusen, of course — made up for most of the season that was. But we failed on our ultimate goal: to reach Europe.
Given the position we were in, it’s hard to fault the team for finishing ninth (which, by the way, must improve this time around), but it’s still bittersweet. An Intertoto Cup spot was excruciatingly close, and if we would have landed that IC spot, that would have meant that we were excruciatingly close to where we wanted to be. But being excruciatingly close to being excruciatingly close to where you want to be is, quite honestly, a failure.
Look at Bayern. They finished fourth in the league, lost out to Aachen in the Round of 16 in the FA Cup, and fell to AC Milan in the Champions League. The aftermath? One of the largest summer spending sprees that brought in the likes of Luca Toni, Franck Ribery, Miroslav Klose, etc. There are many others, but I don’t want to waste my time writing out the billion other imports to the oversized golf ball known as the Allianz Arena.
But that’s my point. Our season was without doubt far from where we want to be and Bayern’s season was dreadful (by their standards at least) as well. And while we’ve also been bringing in some quality talent that definitely excites me about our chances this season (but not on the Bayern level of spending, mind you), I hope that everyone on the team has the mentality that results have to be better. We must improve in the league. We must not crash out early in the FA Cup. And finally, we absolutely have to get back into a European competition. It is the only way the club will get back to where it once was.
And if that happens?
A successful season, indeed.
Category: Opinion
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Great post. Like a lot of other clubs Dortmund also hasn’t set any specific goals for the new season this time. Last year they said they wanted into the UEFA Cup and failed so now they rather say nothing but secretly hope to reach Europe anyway.
But that’s going to be a tough task this year. I don’t know if one of last years top 4 clubs could slip into a big enough crisis to crash out of the CL/UEFA Cup spots completely to make space for Dortmund. I rate Hamburg quite high and could even imagine them challenging for a CL spot rather than the UEFA Cup. That leaves Leverkusen as a potential takeover candidate. They had some prominent players leaving their squad (Juan, Voronin) and at the same time bought a lot of new players, so this is a bit of a surprise package. Or Dortmund could bank on winning the DFB Cup to get to Europe. And then there are clubs like Wolfsburg and Hannover who have similar goals as Dortmund plus the odd surprise team. Nuremberg might want to have a go at the UEFA Cup spots again as well.
To sum it up: Tight race = exciting new season.
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