Marked for Marcel Sabitzer
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match6 Mar 2027
22 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Player ratings8 Mar 2027
Two goals and a mark of 9.26 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Boardroom8 Mar 2027
Nothing has been signed and nothing has been denied. Supporters who have lived through one of these before know the quiet part lasts months and the loud part lasts a week.
Match6 Mar 2027
12 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
Player ratings8 Mar 2027
Successful dribbles: 25. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad8 Mar 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Borussia Dortmund this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad8 Mar 2027
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Marcel Sabitzer and Borussia Dortmund agree another 3 years.
Squad8 Mar 2027
Defences have started doubling up on Serhou Guirassy
12 goals and a season average of 7.27 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Match6 Mar 2027
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Serhou Guirassy. 2‑1 against FC Augsburg, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match27 Feb 2027
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 21 matches without defeat is a foundation Borussia Dortmund did not have in the autumn.
Match1 Mar 2027
Position 2, 55 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Squad1 Mar 2027
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Borussia Dortmund may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad1 Mar 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Borussia Dortmund this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings1 Mar 2027
Successful dribbles: 22. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Marcel Sabitzer falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad1 Mar 2027
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Borussia Dortmund know it.
Player ratings1 Mar 2027
Marked 7.27 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, Borussia Dortmund had the best player on the pitch.
Market1 Mar 2027
Silas Ostrzinski returns from a loan that gave him nothing
0 appearances and 0 goals is not a season, it is a year somebody has lost. Whether that is his fault, the borrowing club's or the people who arranged it is the argument the next few weeks will have.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match30 Jan 2027
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 17 matches without defeat is a foundation Borussia Dortmund did not have in the autumn.
Match1 Feb 2027
47 points on the board and a place in the leading group. Nobody at the ground is saying the word out loud yet.
Market1 Feb 2027
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Market1 Feb 2027
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Borussia Dortmund, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market1 Feb 2027
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Borussia Dortmund heard it as anything else.
Squad1 Feb 2027
A move Otto Stange would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Otto Stange is living that version at Borussia Dortmund, and it tends to show in the first month.
Squad1 Feb 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Borussia Dortmund this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match30 Jan 2027
9 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Words at Borussia Dortmund training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Julian Ryerson is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match9 Jan 2027
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 13 matches without defeat is a foundation Borussia Dortmund did not have in the autumn.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Serhou Guirassy was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Words at Borussia Dortmund training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Marcel Sabitzer is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Squad11 Jan 2027
The manager makes an example of Niklas Süle
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Market11 Jan 2027
Both sides expect a conversation in the coming days. Borussia Dortmund will name a price, and everything after that is arithmetic.
Player ratings11 Jan 2027
Marked 7.59. Ask anyone leaving the ground what settled it and you will get one name, which is the only award that has ever really counted.
Player ratings11 Jan 2027
Successful dribbles: 15. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad11 Jan 2027
One booking too many, and Felix Nmecha sits out. Borussia Dortmund lose him for the sort of avoidable reason that makes a manager's week longer.
Match9 Jan 2027
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. VfL Wolfsburg defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match19 Dec 2026
The unbeaten run reaches 10. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Squad21 Dec 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Borussia Dortmund this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Words at Borussia Dortmund training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Julian Ryerson is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match31 Oct 2026
Maximilian Beier wins it after the whistle should have gone
94 minutes played. Maximilian Beier found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and TSG Hoffenheim went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Tom Heaton breaks a bone — 27 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 27 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
A brace, and Maximilian Beier takes the afternoon — 8.44
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Maximilian Beier provided it, and the 8.44 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Market2 Nov 2026
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Borussia Dortmund heard it as anything else.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Marcel Sabitzer was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad2 Nov 2026
The young player of the month award goes to a 21-year-old at Borussia Dortmund who has looked like the finished article for four weekends running. The next four are the ones that decide whether he is.
Loan watch2 Nov 2026
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Borussia Dortmund, and 0 appearances in 9 say he has earned the hearing.
Squad2 Nov 2026
A place in the month's best eleven for Maximilian Beier
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Maximilian Beier has come out of that comparison in the side, and Borussia Dortmund have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.