The BVB Legends Team – a strong link between yesterday, today and tomorrow

These successes were brought about by players who would subsequently become black and yellow legends. One such example is Roman Weidenfeller, goalkeeper at BVB for 16 years and part of the successful team that won the German title in 2011, celebrated the domestic double of league and cup a year later, and which also made it to the final of the Champions League 12 months further on. Another is Tomas Rosicky, Bundesliga winner as well as UEFA Cup finalist in 2002 with BVB; or Marcio Amoroso, Bundesliga golden boot winner in the same year, and a key player in getting into the aforementioned UEFA Cup final with a hattrick in the first leg of the semi-final tie against AC Milan; or Flemming Povlsen, who spent the most successful years of his career at BVB and who was still able to celebrate winning the German title at the end of his playing time in 1995. And, of course, Lars Ricken, Karl-Heinz Riedle and Paul Lambert from the squad which won the Champions League and Intercontinental Cup soon after in 1997.

All of them and a number of others are part of the BVB Legends Team as of now. “We are really pleased that almost all the players who we contacted agreed spontaneously – and we are all the more pleased given that club loyalty plays much less of a role in contemporary football than it used to do”, said BVB executive Carsten Cramer, who emphasised: “The BVB Legends Team is much more for us than a collection of grey-haired men in XXL kits – they come from different parts of the world, but they live and enliven BVB’s values in the here and now too, and are as such for yesterday, today, and tomorrow a strong identification platform for all those who are connected to this club regionally, nationally and globally.”

The BVB Legends Team will celebrate their debut on 11 August as part of the official opening of the 2018/19 season with a match against Liverpool FC’s legends team. Together with the current squad as well as lots of BVB youth players, the final scene on the pitch at the Signal Iduna Park will be of a 200 man and child strong “team photograph”, building as such a link between the past, present and future at Borussia Dortmund.

From autumn, the BVB Legends will then regularly play matches on the national and international stage as local heroes and global stars, especially to bring people in regions further away in the world closer to the place of yearning that is Borussia Dortmund. “I can speak for my new, and to some extent old teammates, when I say that everybody is looking forward to participating in BVB again actively”, said Dedé, who played for the Black & Yellows from 1998 to 2011, and who henceforth is one of about half-a-dozen Brazilians in the BVB Legends Team.