Who’s in, who’s out?
We are only 2 weeks away from Borussia Dortmund's first trainings session of the new season. Surely BVB had to do some signings during the offseason as the last year was rather disappointing. Though we qualified for the UEFA cup through the cup final, but we did not perform well in the Bundesliga. Especially our defence was lousy and needed reinforcements.
Tamas Hajnal
Hajnal is a typical playmaker. The 27 year old had stints with several clubs all around Europe and changed clubs three times during the last three season. From VV St. Truiden he moved to 2nd division 1. FC Kaiserslautern, then to 1st division side Karlsruher SC. There he had an buy-out option worth 1.25 million Euro only. As we lack a real playmaker, Petric turn out to be more of a striker, the deal makes sense. Especially as Hajnal had a brilliant season with KSC.
Felipe Santana
Of course our main construction side was the defence and so nobody was surprised that our first signing was a defender. What really surprised was, that we signed a Brazilian player nobody had heard of before. It seems that Zorc scouted Santana several months and then quickly signed him before Brazilian giants like Corinthians jumped onto the train. The 22 year old is despite his young age already skipper of Figueirense FC Santa Catarina. His main qualities are his speed, heading and also his offensive power. With a transfer fee of 2,1 million Euro he is not really cheap but also not a risk at all.
Neven Subotic
He was not our premium target. Borussia's focus was on Marko Basa, a 25 year old central defender from Le Mans. Watzke and Zorc already agreed a deal with the player, but the negotiations with Le Mans weren't that easy. They didn't want to lower their initial 8 million Euro price tag. 2 weeks ago Michael Zorc pulled the emergency break and called the transfer off. Borussia Dortmund immediately switched their interest to a young defender, who is not yet that famous, Neven Subotic. The 19 year old American, who has Bosnian roots and lived many years in Germany, was signed from FSV Mainz 05. Mainz? Wasn't there something with Mainz? Of course, our new coach Jürgen Klopp was signed from there. So our new coach knows Subotic very well. He made him a regular starter at the 2nd division side and the young talent paid back with fabulous performances. Many people in Mainz think that Subotic has the potential to become a top quality defender in the nearer future. While that sounds promising, he wasn't that cheap. Rumours are that we outbid TSG Hoffenheim and paid around 4 million Euro plus some small additional fees depending on how we are doing next season.
Patrick Owomoyela
This was surely a surprising move. Watzke and Klopp praised Owomoyela's versatility as he can play on both fullback positions. Of course his main position is right fullback. At Werder Bremen his star began to shine in 2005, when he was signed from Arminia Bielefeld. He immediately was a regular starter and even experienced some national team calls. But his run was stopped by many injuries over the last 2 years. In Dortmund the 2.5 million Euro signing wants to make a new start. He will surely try to kick Rukavina out of the team and on the other hand be a backup for Dede.
jonam, 24.06.2008
