Borussia Dortmund 2024-2025 Season Review
In many ways, it is difficult to know what amounts to a good season for Die Borussen. Obviously, the club’s supporters will be hoping for silverware at the start of each campaign, yet the truth is that the club has spent more seasons not winning something than lifting a trophy.
Even so, there will have been a hope from many that Der BVB would be able to push on in the 2024-2025 campaign, reacting to the club’s Champions League final achievement of the previous year. Things didn’t start well, but they did end much better than expected to offer hope for what the future might look like.
A Terrible Start & Managerial Change
In a literal sense, Borussia Dortmund’s season started quite well thanks to a 2-0 home win over Eintracht Frankfurt in the first game of the season. That being followed by a 0-0 draw on the road to Werder Bremen won’t have set too many alarm bells ringing, whilst a 4-2 win over 1. FC Heidenheim at the Westfalenstadion gave the supporters plenty of cheer about. For anyone wondering how new man in the dugout Nuri Şahin was going to respond to the pressures of being Die Schwarzgelben’s manager, the first few games of the campaign will have offered some reassurance.
Unfortunately, though, things didn’t last. The previous season’s losing Champions League finalists were given a rude awakening courtesy of a 5-1 loss to VfB Stuttgart, which will have made a few people in the club’s hierarchy sit up and take notice. From there, the results can best be described as ‘erratic’. Victory followed defeat, defeat followed victory. Even three 1-1 draws in succession couldn’t do a huge amount to persuade the higher-ups at the club that Şahin was the right man for the job, so when they lost the two games after the winter break, a decision was taken to sack him.
All-Change with the New Manager
When Şahin was sacked on the 22nd of January, Dortmund decided to put Mike Tullberg in temporary charge whilst a more permanent replacement was looked for. In the end, it was Croatian Niko Kovač who was appointed Der BVB’s long-term manager, taking over at the Westfalenstadion on the second of February. The fact that he was born and raised in what was then known as West Berlin certainly helped his credentials, but it is the fact that he had lifted silverware as both a player and manager at Bayern Munich, as well as with Eintracht Frankfurt, that gave him the benefit of the doubt.
@onthecontinentpod Click the link in bio for more 🎧 #football #footballtiktok #fyp #futbol #dortmund #borussiadortmund #nikokovac #bundesliga #championsleague #barcelona ♬ original sound – On The Continent
A manager who has always favoured a variation on 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3, his long-term aim has always been to focus on how his teams work when out of possession. It took him a number of weeks to get his methods across to his players, with some fearing the worst when they lost back-to-back games against FC Augsburg and RB Leipzig in the middle of March, with the second of those two defeats leaving Die Borussen in 11th place and seven points off the Champions League place. From there, though, everything changed and the club was able to put an excellent run together.
In the end, Dortmund won seven of their last eight matches, with the only game they didn’t win being a draw with Bundesliga winners Bayern Munich. That meant that, with most people having all but given up hope of Der BVB finishing in the Champions League places, they went into the final game of the season knowing that it was in their own hands. As Kovač himself put it, they had spent most of the season as ‘just passengers’, but a 3-0 win on the final day would hand them a Champions League spot and meant that they were ‘in the driving seat’ for the last game.
Disappointment in the Cups
In a season where it seemed as though everything was falling apart, few Borussia Dortmund supporters will have been all that interested in how they got on in the cup competitions. Sometimes the cups can help to rescue poor league form, but more often than not they’re just a hindrance. Having beaten Phönix Lübeck 4-1 in the first round of the DFB-Pokal, Die Borussen were then knocked out of the tournament courtesy of a 1-0 loss after extra-time on the road to VfL Wolfsburg. Things went better in the Champions League, finishing tenth in the new-look Swiss system league.
Borussia Dortmund were 12th in the Bundesliga on March 29.
They have since won seven of their eight games in Germany’s top-flight, drawing the other against Bayern Munich, with their 3-0 victory over Holstein Kiel sealing their qualification for next season’s Champions League.
— The Athletic | Football (@theathleticfc.bsky.social) May 17, 2025 at 4:29 PM
That was enough to see them in the play-off round, going up against Sporting CP for a place in the knockout phase proper. Having won the first-leg 3-0, they drew the second 0-0 to set up a last 16 tie against French side Lille. That was also won, emerging with a 3-2 aggregate victory, meaning that they’d play Barcelona in the quarter-finals. The first-leg was an unmitigated disaster, losing 4-0 on the road, but a 3-1 win at the Westfalenstadion restored some pride. It was all about the league form, however, with the sprint for the line and a fourth-place putting them in good stead ahead of the summer’s FIFA Club World Cup.
