For the 2010/11 Bundesliga season, current Liverpool boss Jürgen Klopp moulded a spectacular young Borussia Dortmund side to dethrone Bayern Munich.
When Klopp was appointed as Dortmund head coach in May 2008, club CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke delivered what turned out to be an accurate prediction.
“I think that an exciting period is going to start now,” he said. 먹튀검증
Klopp had flashed a familiar grin at his unveiling, saying that his job was to get the 1997 European champions “back on the right track again.”
By that stage the 40-year-old was already well known in Germany, not only for leading Mainz to the Bundesliga – before being relegated with them two years later – but also for his astute and charismatic observations as a pundit on mainstream TV coverage of major tournaments.
Watch: Klopp and his Dortmund boys celebrate 2011 online!
Dortmund, meanwhile, had emerged from a financial crisis in 2005, but Klopp was their third coach in 18 months, and the previous season they had finished 13th after conceding a league-high 62 goals.
The new arrival’s first two seasons were nonetheless promising. Building a squad based around emerging talents aged 21 or under like Sven Bender, Kevin Großkreutz, Mats Hummels, Nuri Sahin, Marcel Schmelzer and Neven Subotic, Dortmund improved each year to finish sixth and then fifth.
Key additions
Paraguayan forward Lucas Barrios had netted 19 league goals in the 2009/10 campaign, but in the summer of 2010 Dortmund added what would prove to be the final pieces of the jigsaw. Lukasz Piszczek, a full-back and former winger, joined from relegated Hertha Berlin, while an unheralded attacking midfielder, Shinji Kagawa, signed after starring for Japanese second-tier side Cerezo Osaka.
Another player who moved abroad for the first time that year was Robert Lewandowski, a soon-to-be 22-year-old who had scored 41 goals in 82 matches for Lech Poznan in Poland.
