Depleted Dortmund staring at drop

Ten years ago BV Borussia Dortmund lifted the UEFA Champions League trophy but now, following Friday's defeat at DSC Arminia Bielefeld, the former kings of Europe are facing the prospect of dropping into the 2. Bundesliga.

All-time low
German football fans fondly remember 1972, a year in which their national team beat England at Wembley for the first time before going on to UEFA European Championship success. It was also the year Dortmund were last relegated, triggering four seasons as a second division club when their average attendance sank as low as 9,000 before their 1976 return to the top flight, where they have remained since.

Economic disaster
Winning the 1997 UEFA Champions League was the climax of a glittering era for Dortmund that also included three Bundesliga titles, but that run was mostly founded on borrowed money, and successive failures to qualify for Europe's premier club competition prompted debts of €100m to materialise. Dortmund have since stood as an example of the economic pitfalls facing clubs, leading to the resignations of big-spending general manager Michael Meier and president Gerd Niebaum.

Financial legacy
"I don't blame my predecessors for everything but if we didn't have that legacy to cope with we would have a much stronger team," says current Dortmund general manager Hans-Joachim Watzke. "Player salaries have been cut from €57m to €26m and we still have to pay back money that was spent several years ago. We are missing about €10m we would have otherwise each year."

Signings disappoint
While Dortmund's financial situation is slowly improving, their on-pitch outlook is not so bright. Jan Koller, David Odonkor and Tomáš Rosický all left last summer to be replaced by Nelson Valdez, Steven Pienaar, Tinga and Alexander Frei, with mixed success. Poor performances prompted the dismissal of coach Bert van Marwijk in December before Jürgen Röber suffered a similar fate, despite victory in his first game against FC Bayern München.

Doll determination
Former Hamburger SV coach Thomas Doll is the latest man in the hot seat and his new charges will certainly not want for effort. "The players have to give everything from morning to evening," Doll said. "We will take a close look at who's doing so, and the others have a problem." He made his point by suspending midfielders Florian Kringe and Lars Ricken, a scorer in that 1997 European triumph against Juventus. With no money available for new signings and the club sitting one place off the bottom of the Bundesliga, that night in Munich now seems a distant memory.