Nuri Sahin: A new era
The summer of 2024 seems set to be a time of significant change for Borussia Dortmund.
After the club’s season ended with a defeat in the Champions League final to Real Madrid, several changes have already been made looking ahead to the new campaign.
Lars Ricken – who scored one of the goals in BVB’s 1997 UCL final win over Juventus – took over CEO duties from Hans-Joachim Watzke.
Meanwhile, former chief scout Sven Mislintat – nicknamed the ‘Diamond Eye’ – has also returned to the club as Squad Planner.
On the pitch, ‘die Borussen’ bade farewell to its two greatest modern legends; Marco Reus and Mats Hummels both confirmed their departures from Signal Iduna Park at the end of their contracts.
The changes don’t stop there.
Just last week Edin Terzic announced that he was resigning from his post as Dortmund manager.
Terzic had asked to leave and admitted he felt “the club’s new era should begin with a new man on the touchline.”
Arne Slot and Julen Lopetegui both joined Premier League clubs, in Liverpool and West Ham United respectively.
Meanwhile Roger Schmidt retained his post as Benfica manager.
However, a certain icon for the Black and Yellows had just returned to the club as assistant manager at the time.
Initially appointed perhaps with the view to attaining the hot seat in North Rhine-Westphalia, Nuri Sahin is now officially the club’s new head coach.
The new man in charge, Nuri Şahin! pic.twitter.com/DghvsfneCl
— Borussia Dortmund (@BlackYellow) June 14, 2024
Record
This will be just Sahin’s second job as a permanent manager, following his stint in Turkey with Antalyaspor.
The German-born Turkish international played for the Super Lig side for just a season before becoming manager in 2021.
Sahin took over when the club were 14th in the league.
By the end of the term, the Antalya side were seventh.
Along the way, they handed eventual champions Trabzonspor their first defeat of the season before ending the season undefeated in their last 16 matches.
The following season wasn’t as strong; Antalyaspor finished 13th.
However, when Sahin returned to ‘die Schwarzgelben’ as part of Terzic’s coaching team, the former midfielder left with the club back in sixth place.
At the turn of the year, the club were just five points off the top four.
Ultimately, he left Antalyaspor with a win rate of 46.8% (44/94) and an average points per game of 1.40 in the Super Lig.
Sahin also has his UEFA A coaching licence.
Style
While at Antalyaspor, the former Liverpool and Real Madrid midfielder primarily operated with a 4-2-3-1 system.
In possession, this looks more like a 3-4-3.
Sahin admits he feels most influenced by Jürgen Klopp, playing high pressing football.
But the gegenpress doesn’t appear to be his sole style.
The 35-year-old is also an open admirer of Pep Guardiola’s possession style of football and his sides look to play wide with fast transitions.
Sahin is a ‘Borusse’ through and through. He says he wants the football his team plays to resonate with the city.
Sahin and BVB – the story so far
Nuri Sahin remains one of Borussia Dortmund’s favourite sons.
He joined the club aged 13 and came through the ranks to star for the first team.
In 2005 the midfielder made his Bundesliga debut in a 2-2 draw at Wolfsburg.
Aged just 16, he became the youngest player in the league’s history.
When he scored against Nuremberg in November that season, he then became the youngest ever scorer in the Bundesliga.
Those records were later surpassed by current ‘Borusse’ Youssoufa Moukoko and Florian Wirtz.
That season, Sahin made 23 starts, registering six assists along the way.
He then made 11 starts the following year across a variety of different positions.
To further his development with increased game time, BVB boss Thomas Doll sent the 52-time Turkey international on loan to Feyenoord for the 2007-08 season.
In the Eredivisie, Sahin scored six goals and set up a further five across 29 appearances.
He was a regular for the Rotterdam outfit under former gaffer Bert van Marwijk.
When he returned, the academy graduate played a much more significant role.
Sahin started all but one game in the second half of the 2008-09 campaign, setting up five goals in that time.
The breakthrough
However, it was the following year when a 21-year-old Sahin truly announced himself.
He would only miss one match throughout the entire season due to suspension.
The #Bundesliga streets will never forget how good @NuriSahin was. Pure class 💎#OnThisDay eight years ago the @BlackYellow maestro did this… 🎯👇 pic.twitter.com/GvBI1Nx9Y6
— Bundesliga English (@Bundesliga_EN) January 25, 2022
Across the campaign, he netted six times and notched nine assists, even captaining the side on multiple occasions.
The following season, Sahin was unplayable.
A key figure in Klopp’s title-winning side, he started every match until the 31st matchweek, when a knee injury cut his season short.
Along the way, he had picked up eight goals and 13 assists, while impressing in the Europa League too.
That year, he was voted Bundesliga player of the year.
Such form garnered the attention of many top European clubs.
Real Madrid paid €10m to bring Sahin to the Spanish capital.
However, injuries reared their ugly head again and so the following season, he was loaned out to Liverpool and then back to BVB.
The player said: “As a footballer and a human being, I belong here 100%.”
He made an instant impression back in black and yellow, helping the club reach the Champions League final, where he made an appearance, before going on to help ‘die Schwarzgelben’ to the DFL-Supercup the following summer.
In the 2013-14 season, Sahin made 45 starts in all competitions, helping to replace Mario Götze.
The return
Sahin was home and the club made sure he would stay there by triggering the €7m buyout clause in his loan deal in 2014.
But sadly for him, he couldn’t shake off the injuries.
After missing almost the entirety of the 2014-15 season, Sahin could only muster 10 Bundesliga starts in his years under Thomas Tuchel, albeit he did get his hands on his first (and only) DFB-Pokal medal.
The 2017-18 season saw Sahin have some fortune as he managed to go the entire season without seeing the treatment table.
The midfielder was a regular under Peter Bosz but wasn’t preferred by Peter Stöger in a disappointing year for the club.
Things weren’t quite as they once were neither for the player nor for the club, so Sahin deemed the time right to move on in 2018.
Sahin spent two seasons with Werder Bremen before retiring at Antalyaspor.
Will he succeed?
Hiring a 35-year-old with only two years of managerial experience is always a risk.
It appears to be the current trend, that top clubs go for young managers, with the hope of building a long-lasting dynasty.
There’s certainly plenty of reasons to be optimistic with Sahin.
His football is positive and despite one season in Antalya where his side took a step backwards, his spell in Turkey was a promising one.
Add to that his BVB allegiances and his age and this really could be something special.
To contradict that, Edin Terzic was a lifelong ‘Borusse’ and only 41 and while his stint yielded some success, he didn’t always seem the right fit.
Sahin has also had the whole of 2024 to adapt to the current environment at Signal Iduna Park and he will be familiar with both the team and the staff.
Hiring someone who understands the club is usually a good thing.
Meanwhile, reports suggest that the current squad are all in favour of Sahin, while many had opposed Terzic.
We are also at a point where the current generation of up and coming footballers will have watched Sahin in his Dortmund days growing up.
With that comes a certain pull factor. Incomings for ‘die Schwarzgelben’ this summer will be interesting to keep an eye on.
Pascal Gross, Serhou Guirassy and Waldemar Anton have all been outlined as potential targets thus far.
With Vincent Kompany at Bayern Munich and Xabi Alonso at Bayer Leverkusen, the Bundesliga is rife with promising, young managers.
That could make for quite an open season yet again.
There’s much uncertainty surrounding this move. But the Yellow Wall can look at this optimistically and hope that a successful new era is about to get underway.
Borussia Dortmund Managers Post-Jürgen Klopp
- Thomas Tuchel (2015-2017)
- Peter Bosz (2017)
- Peter Stöger (2017-2018)
- Lucien Favre (2018-2020)
- Edin Terzic (2020-2021)
- Marco Rose (2021-2022)
- Edin Terzic (2022-2024)
- Nuri Sahin (2024-present)
