30 years ago today: 8-0 v Köln makes sure BVB stay in the Bundesliga

Without doubt there is a long list of BVB home games that would like to be seen as the top game of all time and when it comes to the question of which one of these games was the best, the most important, the most tense, the most spectacular, the most exciting – in short: the greatest game – this is something that is very much open to debate. The answers to this question can and will vary, if only – and this is what makes football so fascinating – because it is always related to a personal experience.

Enough small talk now. Let’s get down to the nitty gritty! Let’s get down to facts. Let’s rewind the history of Borussia Dortmund back to the 17.May 1986. Let’s look back at a game that was not all about titles and trophies and about glory; when the opponent was not Real Madrid, Manchester United, not even Bayern Munich or FC Schalke 04, instead it was: Fortuna Köln. A club that was playing in the 4.Division in season 2013/14, one league below Borussia Dortmund’s second team. A club that also wanted to play in the top league on that Whit-Monday 1986 and wanted to send the famous BVB down to the 2.Bundesliga 14 years after the bitter relegation in 1972 and ten years after the much celebrated promotion to the Bundesliga.

There are just too many reasons that specifically makes this return leg of the Bundesliga relegation play-off 1985/86 the number one BVB match in the Westfalenstadion / Signal Iduna Park of all time. The most important reason was not to do with sports, instead it was to do with economics: if Borussia, who at the time were in a perilous financial state, would have been relegated, the club that Dr. Reinhard Rauball – who had been installed as the emergency CEO by the District Court Dortmund – tried to save from what there was to save surely would not have survived. Just one indication of the miserable state of play for the Black Yellows were the attendance figures. The average attendance of 42 000 in the first year after BVB got promoted had dwindled down to 20 306 spectators by season 1983/84. In 1985/86 the attendance averaged 22 573 per game. The capacity was down to roughly 40 per cent. When we look at today, where the average attendance is over 80 000 and the capacity is at nearly 100 per cent, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

And now let’s look at what happened on the pitch: Borussia Dortmund had a horror season with a frustrating run-in to the season behind them when it was time for the dramatic showdown against Fortuna Köln. BVB had already slipped into the bottom of the Bundesliga table on match day 4 after losing 1-4 at home, just three match days later they landed on 17.place after losing 1-6 in Bochum and on match day 13 they were in bottom place with 8:18 points after a 2-3 defeat against the new top of the table team Borussia Mönchengladbach. A short respite with a 1-0 win at Bayern in front of just 15 000 spectators in the Munich Olympic Stadium and a 2-0 win against VFB Stuttgart was followed by a 1-6 thrashing in the derby away to Schalke. Borussia went into the winter break with 14:20 points in 14.place just hovering above the relegation zone.

The second half of the season was then a mixture of feelings and emotions. After a 5-1 win against Köln and a 0-0 in Nürnberg, BVB climbed up to 10.place by match day 21, however the Black Yellows lost their thread in the final run-in to the season. The negative highlight was on match day 32 when they went down to 16.place and a relegation place after losing   0-4 at VFB Stuttgart. The club’s board decided enough was enough: Head Coach Pal Csernai was dismissed. His assistant Reinhard Saftig, who was seen as Csernai’s successor anyway, took over – and he nearly made sure BVB climbed to safety in the league with a 1-1 against Schalke and a 4-1 win at bottom placed Hannover 96. In the end BVB missed out by just two goals (49:65 goals/ -16) with the same points total as Eintracht Frankfurt (35:49/ -14), whilst the other traditional clubs 1.FC Köln and 1.FC Nürnberg, who were also in severe danger of going down, scraped their way to safety in the final run-in to the season.

And so it came to the duel against the very unlucky 2.Bundesliga third placed team Fortuna Köln. The team from Köln had been top of the table just six match days before the end of the season and they were destined to get promoted. But then to everyone’s surprise they collapsed and only managed to gain one more point in a postponed game in Osnabrück and lost to Aachen (0-3), in Kassel (0-3), at home against second from bottom Tennis Borussia Berlin (0-2) and also against their top of the table rival Blau-Weiβ Berlin (1-3).

Fortuna slipped down from the promotion places with two games remaining, on the second last match day they climbed back into the play-off place with a 6-0 against Bayreuth – and it looked like they blew it again in the final game of the season. With quarter of an hour remaining they were trailing Karlsruher SC 0-2 away from home. Only a double wammy of goals by Achim Kropp (75.) and Bernd Grabosch (77.) to make it 2-2 and Kassel’s late defeat against relegated Bayreuth secured third place.

They were the outsider as the 2.Bundesliga team anyway and their drop in form further underlined the outsider role the Köln team had. On the other hand BVB with Saftig at the helm went into these games with a fresh wind. But what looked like a clear cut outcome on paper developed into something completely different once the teams met on the pitch. The second division team dominated the first leg in front of 44 000 spectators in the larger Müngersdorfer stadium of their unpopular local rivals 1.FC Köln and won the game 2-0 through goals by Bernd Grabosch (53.) and Karl Richter (75.). Four days later they came to Dortmund and walked out of the tunnel onto the pitch strutting with confidence.

The hosts were in a totally different state of mind, even though they knew they had 54 000 plus spectators in the completely sold out – some even say hopelessly overcrowded – Westfalenstadion right behind them. But they were also carrying some baggage with them: their goal-getter Jürgen Wegmann. Wegmann recounted this historic event in May 2011 for the 25. Anniversary of the “the Dortmund miracle” in the football magazine 11 Freunde: “the pressure was especially big for me because just a few days earlier the announcement was made that I would be transferring to Schalke. That was of course high treason for the Dortmund fans. The 14 goals I had scored that season were instantly forgotten, they called me “Judas” and they booed me and whistled when I came onto the pitch on that humid afternoon. But all the booing and whistling just inspired me all the more.”

For a long spell hardly anything to virtually nothing indicated that Wegmann would play the main role in this miracle or that there would even still be a miracle. Quite to the contrary: Bernd Grabosch was ice cold when he hit BVB where it hurt on this stifling hot day by scoring early on to make it 0-1 (14.) and taking the aggregate score over the two games to 0-3. That was also the half-time score and the hopes of the Dortmund fans were melting away like the ice from the kit sponsor Artic in the beaming sunshine.

What happened then was not just the resurrection of a team that had been declared for as good as dead, but even more it was one of the turning points in BVB’s club history. In November 2011 Jürgen Wegmann reminisced in an interview with the Sport inside programme on WDR TV: “it was very quiet in the dressing room at half time. You could have heard a pin drop.” But as he told the magazine 11 Freunde: “I told the boys in the dressing room that this match would only be decided in the last minutes of the game and I already had an inkling that I would have a major part to play in this.”

Wegmann remembers the second half in minute details, BVB played to the Südtribüne (South stand) and the fans were behind their team with the motto “now let’s do it all the more”. After they got a quick equaliser with an equally controversial and clinical penalty through Michael Zorc (53.) “there was a wave of attacks onto one goal and in the 68.minute Marcel Radacanu scored a lovely goal with his head after a cross from Daniel Simmes.” Dortmund was in the lead but they still needed one goal – and they still needed one goal right up to the closing minutes of the game. Jürgen Wegmann described the last minute to 11 Freunde: “I still see the big stadium clock in front of me today, the dials were turning more and more to the end of the game. The final whistle was getting closer and closer, we were physically drained, our legs were heavy, our circulation was going haywire and even the fans seemed to have given up hope. But I felt deep inside that something would still happen.”

And this is how it happened: Storck gets the ball in midfield, he blindly crosses the ball on the turn from the right wing to the edge of the penalty area. Both Zorc and Simmes play the ball on with their head. The ball lands at the feet of Ingo Anderbrüge in the penalty area, he pulls the ball back from the left with his left foot from the bye line sharply in front of the goal. Köln’s goalkeeper Jacek Jarecki can’t keep hold of the ball, Wegmann describes the rest again on WDR: “the goalkeeper made a little mistake and let the ball bounce away – and I am there where a striker should be and somehow pushed the ball over the line.” Just a few seconds before the final whistle. And because the European Cup ruling, whereby away goals count double if the scores are even did not apply to the play-off finals at that time, there was to be a one-off all deciding final on neutral ground.

The rest of the story is well known. The play-off final, that was scheduled for the 23.May had to be postponed at the last minute, because Köln’s patron and man-who-makes-things-happen, Jean “Schäng” Löring presented the German FA with 13 sick-notes. The Fortuna squad had been hit by a stomach virus. So they say. For the BVB fans it was obvious: a tactical manoeuvre to put the brakes on against the euphoria that Wegmann’s 3-1 had triggered off in football mad Dortmund. This meant that they had to wait in agony until the showdown on the 30.May in front of 50 000 spectators in the Düsseldorf Rheinstadion, with more than 30 000 fans in Black and Yellow.

Köln defended for 30 minutes against a Borussia team full of confidence and attacking all the time to keep the score at 0-0. Then Dirk Hupe opened the floodgates and after the break Zorc (46.) and Anderbrüge (49.) hit two quick goals to land the knock-out punch against Fortuna – the second division club then just got overwhelmed against a Borussia team playing like in a trance and BVB scored further goals through Storck, Simmes, Wegmann, Zorc again and Frank Pagelsdorf. Frank Fligge