VfL Wolfsburg have accepted the money. What Borussia Dortmund do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
Eintracht Frankfurt pay $36.2M, and the deal is done. The number reads well on a balance sheet; whether it reads well on the pitch is next season's question.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 94 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Player ratings11 Jan 2027
Ethan Nwaneri, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 7.96
A mark of 7.96 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
“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 The request is on a desk at Borussia Dortmund, and it is not being withdrawn.
4 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Borussia Dortmund have gone to VfB Stuttgart with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
The offer went to Manchester United this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Borussia Dortmund will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Borussia Dortmund have gone to VfL Wolfsburg with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
“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 The request is on a desk at Borussia Dortmund, and it is not being withdrawn.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Borussia Dortmund will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
3 goals in one afternoon from one man. The other players were also present, a witness confirmed.
Player ratings28 Dec 2026
Ethan Nwaneri, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 8.16
A mark of 8.16 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
A season average of 7.19 at an age when most of his year group are still in the youth team. Borussia Dortmund know what they have, and so, by now, does everybody else.
Player ratings28 Dec 2026
Serhou Guirassy was on a different afternoon to everybody else
9.73. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Match26 Dec 2026
Another one collected away from home
3 on the bounce on the road for Borussia Dortmund. The coaches leave early, arrive at unlovely grounds in the dark, and keep coming home with three points.
Felix Nmecha 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.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
16 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Serhou Guirassy is on it.
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 0‑0, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Serhou Guirassy signs something — a contract at Borussia Dortmund or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
A brace, and Ethan Nwaneri takes the afternoon — 8.71
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Ethan Nwaneri provided it, and the 8.71 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
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.
He is 19 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Conceding is one thing; the response is what tells you about a dressing room. Ethan Nwaneri had Borussia Dortmund level again within 1 minutes, and Köln never got to play with a lead at all.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Serhou Guirassy provided it, and the 9.15 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Successful dribbles: 29. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Player ratings30 Nov 2026
Ethan Nwaneri, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 8.26
A mark of 8.26 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Borussia Dortmund told Gregor Kobel something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Felix Nmecha 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.
8 call-ups is a compliment to the squad and a headache for the man running it. He will get them back in a fortnight, tired, in various states of repair.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Sebastian Brandt after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Serhou Guirassy signs something — a contract at Borussia Dortmund or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
Two goals and a mark of 8.64 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.85 for the rest of it.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Borussia Dortmund hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Serhou Guirassy and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 19-year-old it feels ownership of. Ethan Nwaneri has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Marked 8.83 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Felix Nmecha and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Every run ends on an afternoon somebody had marked down as routine. This one went 8 matches, which is long enough that a town had stopped counting, and short enough that it will remember exactly who stopped it.
Marked 8.02 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Successful dribbles: 17. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
He has had enough of the noise. Whether Borussia Dortmund can be a quieter place for him, or whether the only cure is a move somewhere the phone-ins are gentler, is a question for the next few months.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 2‑3 defeat, delivered by Sebastian Brandt to a room that had heard them before.
6 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Ethan Nwaneri, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 7.70
A mark of 7.70 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Ethan Nwaneri is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
3 away wins in a row. Travelling support is the truest kind, and this season it is being repaid in the only currency that counts.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Serhou Guirassy was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.38. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
In brief
Player ratingsThe game went through Julian Ryerson — 7.67
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Marcel Sabitzer provided it, and the 8.32 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
The hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Ethan Nwaneri did not need any: 7.86, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Felix Nmecha and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 9 goals between Borussia Dortmund and St. Pauli, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
$27.5M was the most the club would pay and RB Leipzig were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Borussia Dortmund asked and RB Leipzig said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Ramy Bensebaini reports back to Borussia Dortmund with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 13 signed and 3 gone
That is the business done at Borussia Dortmund until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
At 19 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
“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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Manchester City have kept their man, and Borussia Dortmund go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Borussia Dortmund can pretend not to have heard.
Red Bull Salzburg paid $9.2M and Borussia Dortmund took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
The hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Ethan Nwaneri did not need any: 7.97, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Successful dribbles: 23. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Felix Nmecha and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Maximilian Beier has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.