Julian Brandt could be Borussia Dortmund’s last ray of hope

Borussia Dortmund are in a terrible mess. The trauma of last season, when they blew the title on the final day, was always likely to leave a hangover, but few would have anticipated the mood being this bleak.

After three Bundesliga games, they have five points. That is not a bad return and nor is it unusual; Dortmund started slowly last season under Edin Terzic. But the mood is ugly and with good reason. Those five points are a generous reward for some uninspiring performances. BVB were laboured in their opening-day win over Cologne, fortunate to take a draw at Bochum, and extremely lucky to take a point from Friday night’s dismal collapse against Heidenheim.

The full-time whistle brought something close to outright hostility. It drew a cascade of disapproval from the Westfalenstadion and — worse — when the home players gathered in front of the Yellow Wall to salute their ultras, they were whistled at and waved away. That is unusual. In German football, that is often a moment of mutual appreciation between fans and players that stands apart from the result. This time, it was very clearly a reaction to a standard on the pitch not having been met.

Julian Brandt was honest in his reflections when he spoke to the broadcaster DAZN after the game. He was not quite as damning as those supporters, nor the critics who have taken aim at Dortmund, Terzic and CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke in the days since, but he was hardly complimentary.

“Football is a game of errors”, he said. “You’re always going to get misplaced passes, but we need to learn to protect the ball when we have tracked back and defended. It will be our downfall if we keep conceding goals like that.

“We were sloppy and inconsistent in front of goal, and also in front of our own goal.”

That they were. BVB quickly established a lead and were 2-0 up after 15 minutes. Heidenheim are a promoted team, from a tiny town in south Germany, who lost their first two games of the season — the kind of side who should be trampled under Dortmund’s hooves. But 2-0 became 2-2 in the second half, as BVB wilted under their own lights. Late on, Heidenheim squandered several opportunities to win the game. Frank Schmidt’s football is vertical and energetic and the more desperate Dortmund became, the more effective it was. His players broke into good scoring positions almost at will in the final minutes and only a lack of composure allowed Dortmund to keep a point.

Their forward line was ineffective, even after new signing Niclas Fullkrug was introduced. Their defence, again, looked porous. Around Brandt in midfield, it was chaos. Other than the regularity with which their breaks occurred, it was striking just how often Heidenheim manufactured three-, four- or even, at one point, five-on-two opportunities on the counter.

Brandt was speaking generously. Most likely, the imbalance in his side will have terrified him. Principally because he has such an important and intriguing role to play in this drama.

He performed reasonably well on Friday night, despite what surrounded him, and had initially set a very different tone when he hooked the game’s opening goal in off the bar after just seven minutes. It was true to type; he has been a fine and stylish player for a long time and at his best, he is a joy to watch. Alongside Jude Bellingham, he was among BVB’s best players last season and one of the reasons they came so close to winning the Bundesliga.

But Brandt is not a star. At least not in the modern Dortmund sense. He is admired and appreciated, but not coveted in the way that Bellingham was — or Erling Haaland and Jadon Sancho were before him.

The trouble for Dortmund is that they need that player. A year ago, Carsten Cramer — the club’s commercial director — talked to The Athletic about Dortmund’s unique selling point and the worth of what he described then, in September 2022, as “the firework on the pitch”. For as long as the world outside Germany has been paying attention to Dortmund, that is what they’ve been associated with — spectacle, style, enthralling young players and the dark, seductive energy of their stadium.

But as time passes, the further from that identity the team seems to stray. Dortmund invaded the global consciousness during the Jurgen Klopp era and often played quick, enthralling football under Thomas Tuchel, but in the years since, their footballing brand has become increasingly driven by individual players. The system has become less the star. Instead, it has been Sancho, Haaland or Bellingham. While the quality of football has often been unconvincing, the talent — and the world’s eagerness to watch it evolve — has been enough to protect the spectacle, Dortmund’s identity and their place in the game’s hierarchy.

Now, the proposition is weaker. Dortmund still have some very good players — Karim Adeyemi may one day become an excellent one — but their summer recruitment was focused on adding experience. Marcel Sabitzer, 29, and Fullkrug, 30, will be assets, and Ramy Bensebaini, 28, should be one too. Felix Nmecha was signed for the future and the 22-year-old might one day become another star. But none of them capture the imagination. They do not engender the kind of excitement that Dortmund have so often been powered and inspired by. None of those players are likely to bring Dortmund closer to Bayern Munich, nor help them stave off the growing challenge from Bayer Leverkusen and RB Leipzig.

So, the fireworks on the pitch look dull. There are also bigger questions, such as whether Terzic has the tactical dexterity to bring the best out of this group. Parts of the German media already think not. Some within it are already wondering whether Julian Nagelsmann might be worth a call.

Perhaps that is premature and maybe describing this as a crisis is over the top. Whatever the case, it is still a situation that requires a remedy. With the transfer window shut and projections of some of Dortmund’s younger players being rethought, it is not entirely clear where one might come from.

Brandt? He is not a saviour, but he might help alleviate some of these concerns. That prospect teases an interesting new narrative arc: can he step out of the chorus and into the spotlight, and become talismanic in a way that papers over this team’s flaws and its lack of lustre? At 27, he is too old to be an object of wonder. He is not Ousmane Dembele or Mario Gotze or Sancho or Haaland. But he is gifted and remains the one truly enviable attacking talent left in this team and one of the few players most neutral fans would gladly pay to watch.

Whether it suits him or not, it is a role he might have to play if Dortmund’s season — and even their identity — is to regain its definition.