One of elite football’s most lauded business models comes to Newcastle on Wednesday evening, entitled to proudly survey its record as a nursery for talent but concerned about how far that can take a club up the hierarchy of the modern game.
Last May, Borussia Dortmund came within goal difference of ending the longest run of domestic titles in any major European league, Bayern Munich’s 11 successive Bundesligas. Now, Dortmund find themselves bottom of their Champions League group.
Their bad luck is to have been planted in the toughest of the first-phase pools. As Dortmund’s in-form attacking midfielder, Julian Brandt, noted of Group F, headed by Newcastle United, “this group is so wild, anything can happen”. Exhibit one: Newcastle 4, Paris Saint-Germain 1, on match day two, a result that stunned the seeded French club, who on Wednesday take on seven-time European Cup winners AC Milan.
What is quite liable to happen, by the time all the group’s clashes of established – and aspiring – heavyweights are played out is that a former Dortmunder will have had an influence on who ends up in a qualifying spot. On Wednesday, the chance is Alexander Isak’s.
Isak joined Dortmund in early 2017, a tall, wiry teenager nimble on the ball and scouted in his native Sweden for his high potential as a centre-forward. The interest from Dortmund was attractive. Here was a suitor with an excellent reputation for nurturing young attacking talent.
He joined during a productive period for Dortmund’s well-run recruitment department. A young American named Christian Pulisic had recently been elevated to the first-team squad, Dortmund having brought him across the Atlantic at 16 years old. In the previous transfer window, Ousmane Dembele had arrived, a prodigiously gifted French winger who had impressed at Rennes.
The rest is history, part of the bittersweet pattern that Dortmund supporters are used to. Their privilege is to watch young, outstanding talent shine and develop. Usually they then say farewell while those starlets are still on the rise. They waved off Erling Haaland, sold at a 200 per cent profit by Dortmund in the summer of 2022 and promptly watched him win his and Manchester City’s first European Cup.
A year later, Jude Bellingham departed after a three-year stay that started as a 17-year-old. In the last two months Bellingham – sold to Real Madrid for €70 million more than the €30 million that had moved him from Birmingham City to the Bundesliga – has been collecting a series of man-of-the-match awards in the colours of Madrid.
In this line Pulisic has a prominent place, sold at 21 to Chelsea for €64 million, as does Dembele, who joined Dortmund for €35 million at 19 and a year later was moving to Barcelona for a staggering €135 million. Their career paths since give Group F an extra twist.
Pulisic joined Milan this summer, and is their joint leading goalscorer, hoping to take some of that Serie A momentum into Europe, with Milan yet to score in Group F. Dembele, meanwhile, is seeking his first goal since moving from Barcelona to PSG in August.
In this line of stars for whom Dortmund was a common springboard, Isak is the odd man out. After an initial season with the youth and reserve Dortmund teams, Isak would spend two frustrating years deprived of first-team opportunities. By the time he left, for a loan at Willem II in the Netherlands, he had made just one Bundesliga start.
“It was perhaps not the right moment for him with us,” admitted Dortmund’s director of sport Sebastian Kehl. “Alex took a small step back and then a huge step forward.”
The catalyst was a move to Real Sociedad, from where Newcastle set a then club record fee to sign Isak at the beginning of 2022-23. Sociedad had paid €15 million to Dortmund in 2019. It proved a shrewd buy. Among Isak’s 44 goals for the Spanish club were match-winning contributions to the club’s Copa del Rey triumph of 2021.
“It was a big change for him when he came to England,” acknowledged Eddie Howe, the Newcastle manager. “Because the style of play and our style is different.”
There was also a long layoff with a thigh injury last season. “It probably helped him actually,” said Howe. “It gave him a chance to sit back, watch the team and understand the expectations.”
Isak has approached his second season at Newcastle with no signs of trepidation. An Isak goal knocked Manchester City out of the League Cup last month. He has scored six times in eight Premier League appearances. Speaking after a rugged display against PSG, in which Isak played with a bandaged head after a collision with Lucas Hernandez, Howe praised the courage and will to win of the Swede.
“I’ve seen a real desire off the ball from Alex to press, to work, to set standards from the front in terms of how we play off the ball. He’s been terrific.”
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