Borussia Dortmund’s season ended in inevitable heartbreak this past Saturday as Bayern Munich cruised to a win against Eintracht Frankfurt to secure their 7th straight Bundesliga title. What started out as such a promising year with Dortmund taking a big league in the title race, dwindled down after the winter break and resulted in Bayern winning the title by only 2 points. It was the ultimate what could have been season and by all standards, Dortmund choked the title away. But that’s in the past and Dortmund are doing exactly what they should do by looking to the future, and boy oh boy are they already preparing for next year. Just 4 days after the their season ended, Borussia Dortmund have made a splash in the transfer market to say the least. I’m almost positive the transfer market doesn’t officially open until June but that hasn’t stopped Dortmund from stringing together a trio of signings that any club in the world would be jealous of.

Nico SchulzPhoto Credit: Matthias Hangst — Nico Schulz
Photo Credit: Matthias Hangst

They started off on Tuesday by signing German left-back Nico Schulz. Now Nico Schulz is what you would consider a late bloomer. He’s 26 years old, which isn’t old by any means, but he really burst onto the scene in the past 2 years. To put things in perspective, in the 2016-17 season in which he played with Borussia Monchengladbach, he actually played two games with the reserve squad in the 4th tier of German football. But fast forward 2 years and he’s not only broke out as a top left-back in the Bundesliga but he’s also been called up by the German national team as well, where he’s made 6 appearances and scored 2 goals. Schulz should be a great addition to the Dortmund backline, which was their achilles heel this past season.

So a nice little start to the transfer window on Tuesday for Borussia Dortmund, so what do they do next? They go and sign two more star players to squad. Dortmund officially announced today that they sign Thorgan Hazard and Julian Brandt. Thorgan is obviously the younger brother to Eden Hazard, but Thorgan himself is no slouch. Also at 26 years of age, Thorgan has really come into his own over the past few seasons scoring 11 or more goals in each of the last 3 seasons across all competitions. The attacking midfielder is coming off an impressive 13 goals and 12 assists in 35 games this past season. Thorgan Hazard is a great addition to the Dortmund midfield and would have been for pretty much any club in the world. Julian Brandt is an attacking midfielder as well but he plays out on the wing more often that not. At 23 years old, Brandt is one of the top young players in all of Germany. And at 23 he’s already made 24 appearances for the German national team and he’s been a regular in the Bayer Leverkusen side since he was 18 years old. Last season Julian Brandt scored 10 goals and had 17 assists in 42 games played. The most impressive part of all of this is how cheap Borussia Dortmund was able to get these three players. Dortmund paid around $29 million for Schulz, $29 million for Hazard and $28.5 for Brandt. In times when transfer fees have been out of this world, that is an incredible piece of business. Essentially the Pulisic transfer to Chelsea paid for both Hazard and Brandt, and as a Chelsea fan I’d probably take Hazard or Brandt over Pulisic at this point in time.

In the end, the Brandt and Hazard edition will make Dortmund a lot better. They lost Pulisic, granted he only played in about half the games for Dortmund this year, and they are now rumored to potentially lose Jadon Sancho. In my opinion, Sancho is right there with Brandt in terms of talent, and will be worth double or triple the price with Premier League clubs bidding against one another. So to be able to add Hazard and Brandt and lose Pulisic and Sancho and net around $100 million, that’s really good business as a club. Even without Sancho and Pulisic, Dortmund will have Alcacer, Gotze, Reus, Hazard and Brandt in their attack next season, which should be a deadly attack if it can remain healthy. The only other signing I believe they need is to bring in another center back for defense.

Thanny

Dortmund Go On A Signing Spree