Borussia Dortmund: Giants of German Football

Athletic Club will gear up for the upcoming 2021-22 season with a friendly match against Bundesliga side FC Dortmund in Sankt Gallen, Switzerland on July 31.

This will be the fourth time the two sides have faced each other, the most recent clash being a 0-1 victory for Athletic Club at the same location back in August 2016.

Borussia Dortmund are one of the most successful sides in German history, having won the First Division title on eight occasions. What’s more, they won the UEFA Champions League in 1996-97 and the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1965-66.

The Bundesliga club are renowned for their commitment to youth, and the BVB Evonik Football Academy has produced an abundance of highly decorated players.

For example, current captain Marco Reus is a boyhood Borussia fan. The winger entered the academy as a seven-year-old, and although he was originally let go, he rejoined the club before the 2012-13 campaign. Since then he has made 315 appearances and scored 140 times.

Mario Götze, who now plays for PSV Eindhoven and had two spells at the club either side of a stint at Bayern Munich, first joined BVB as an eight-year old and went on to score the winning goal in Germany’s World Cup final triumph over Argentina in 2014.

Loyalty and passion run deep at the German club. Signal Iduna Park, their 81,365 seater stadium, has one of the liveliest atmospheres in Europe thanks to its famed ‘Yellow Wall’, and the sporting department is led by Champions League winners and one-club men in the shape of Lars Ricken (Academy Manager) and Michael Zorc (Sporting Director).

Their present squad has an average age of 26.1 and contains some of Europe’s most promising talents, such as Erling Haaland and English Jude Bellingham, the latter one is currently starring for the Three Lions at Euro 2020.

In addition to them, nine other current Borussia Dortmund players have been called up to represent their respective national teams at this summer’s European Championships: Mats Hummels and Emre Can (Germany), Axel Witsel, Thorgan Hazard and Thomas Meunier (Belgium), Manuel Akanji and Gregor Kobel (Switzerland), Raphael Guerreiro (Portugal) and Thomas Delaney (Denmark).