"The most exciting months" for Lars Ricken

A recently-employed member of staff at the BVB academy was shocked by just how big the organisation is. She had no idea that the Black & Yellow talent factory was such a huge machine, she admitted to Lars Ricken. The department now has around 100 members of staff and 200 players, and at the top of it all is a former first-team star and Dortmund native. Since joining the organisation in 2008, BVB's chief forger of talent has led the academy to unparalleled success. After being promoted in 2021, his new job title is director of the youth performance centre, but that's the only thing that's changed for the 45-year-old. He may now be a director instead of a youth coordinator, but his duties have remained much the same. "I was fortunate that Hans-Joachim Watzke and Michael Zorc had already entrusted me with the strategic, financial and personnel responsibilities for this department," says Ricken. Will he now be formally addressed as "Mr. Director"? "No," Ricken replies with a laugh, "people generally still just call me Lars.''

Titles are awarded and silverware is handed out in spring. Could it be that April and May are your favourite months, Lars?
At the very least they're the most exciting months. As to whether or not they are the best months, well this year I can only judge once the important games have been played.

2022 could be the most successful year of your post-playing career. The double is a real possibility. Are you particularly looking forward to the cup final on 20 May against VfB Stuttgart? After all, you've already celebrated six German Championship titles in the youth set-up, but a DFB-Pokal victory has eluded you, even back in your playing days.
First of all: for me, winning a title in the youth sector is just as important as it was when I won them as a player. I don't make a distinction - I do the job today with the same emotion and passion I had as a player.

Your record in the cup as a player... 
...was terrible, I know (sighs). In 2001 we even lost against the VfL Wolfsburg reserves in the first round. It was always a goal of mine to make it to Berlin one day and lift the DFB-Pokal trophy. Unfortunately it wasn't meant to be. I made it to the final once in the youth teams, but we suffered a loss on penalties to Freiburg. That's why I feel so motivated to get the job done this time round. We're really looking forward to the game. 

...in which arguably the two best U19 teams in Germany are going head-to-head?
The reigning title winners, Borussia Dortmund, are facing off against last year's cup winners, VfB Stuttgart. 

How do you rate the U19s' chances of winning the Championship title?
If we make it to the semi-finals, then we know that we have very important work to do to get the players ready. Our goal is then also to reach the final - and to play the best football we can. First of all though, the most honest title to win is the West German Championship, because this year we played half a season for it at least. In any case, we are happy that we still have every chance of winning silverware and don't have to let the rest of the season just pass by. The boys have to train with focus, discipline and desire until the end of the season.

The U19s also made their mark on the international stage, reaching the quarter-finals of the UEFA Youth League. How often do you still think about the unlucky defeat to Atletico Madrid?
That one still stings. To be knocked out in a game like that is extremely annoying and frustrating. At Borussia Dortmund we are very ambitious, we wanted to make it to the Final Four. And in the end, we didn't, because we couldn't get the ball over the line. We don't want to rest on our laurels and look back at making the quarter-finals and say: 'It's all good, it was a good ride.' If you do that, you don't develop any further.

Until 16 March, the Borussia Dortmund U19s were fighting on three fronts. But then, Mike Tullberg's team fell to an undeserved 1-0 loss to Atletico Madrid in a game they completely dominated. In front of a crowd of almost 20,000 fans in SIGNAL IDUNA PARK, luck just wasn't on BVB's side. Events on the pitch led to dejection and a sense of injustice, which caused feelings of disappointment and powerlessness. Anyone but the most die-hard of football pragmatists would turn their back on the kind of destructive football practised by Atletico. Apart from the action that led to the decisive spotkick, the Spaniards showed zero interest in playing football. No special skill set is required to park the bus and indulge in mindless destruction. It's clear that they teach them to play the Simeone style early in Madrid. For Ricken, this is no way to play the game. "I don't want to see a BVB team play the way Atletico did," he says.

Borussia Dortmund's youth director watched the quarter-final in the west stand, block 27, row 24, seat 66, where BVB boss Hans-Joachim Watzke usually sits (he travelled to Mainz with the first team that day). Ricken wore jeans, a white shirt, a black jumper under a black parka, and brown suede shoes on his feet. On the spur of the moment, he gave consent for us to join him as he watched the game. As a precaution, Ricken points out that "no big reactions" can be expected from him, no matter what course the game takes. And indeed: the academy boss is inscrutable as he follows the action on the pitch; it's almost as if he has put up an invisible protective bubble around himself. The emotions are always under control. Three decades ago, a blink of an eye was interpreted as an outburst of emotion on the part of Swedish tennis star and Boris Becker's arch-rival, Stefan Edberg. The same could be said today of Ricken, who expresses himself through no more than a slight shift in posture as he watches on from his chair. 

That's typical of him. When he accompanies the U19s or U17s to away games, he positions himself, wherever possible, in such a way that he cannot be seen and can be alone. "I want to have my peace and quiet and concentrate on the game," Ricken reveals. When Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich contested an epic final in 2017, which BVB won on home soil after extra-time and a penalty shoot-out, Ricken sat next to club president Dr. Reinhard Rauball. The way he remembers it, he didn't say a single word for more than two hours. Why? "It's important for me to keep a certain detachment. It does me good."

BVB are the last club to win an U19 German Championship title. That was back in 2019, and the competition has not been held since then. How much was lost in the pandemic years?
It shouldn't prevent any young talent from becoming a professional footballer. Maybe it will take a little longer than usual for a few players, but the real foundations are laid in the crucial years between U11 and U14. Of course, we hardly played for a year and a half and had far fewer training sessions than normal. But we did everything we could within the regulations, even digital training.

How did that work?
In the morning, the boys had to do a running session and use an app to confirm that they had completed it. Then they had strength and conditioning exercises to do. After that, they had time to take care of school-related things before we sent them game sequences that they had to analyse. And then they had a technical task to complete - even if it was doing keepie-uppies with a toilet roll, which one of them actually managed to do 180 times. After ten attempts, the best I managed was ten (laughs). As you see, the boys had a strict daily programme. We tried as best we could to make up for the limitations caused by the pandemic. Later, it was possible to train at the training ground in groups of at least two.

In an interview with kicker, you bemoaned the low number of top-level games in which the U19s and U17s have been able to put their abilities to the test. With this in mind, are you surprised that two titles are still up for grabs? Or can that be explained by the fact that all clubs have had to work under the same adverse conditions? 
We're not talking about a problem that is unique to BVB; it's something that affects youth football as a whole. In other countries, they were able to carry out full training and match schedules in spite of Covid, meaning they have a clear advantage over teams from Germany. Between the 2020/21 and the 2022/23 season, our U23 team will have played 116 games in the Regionalliga, while we'll have played 36. That's a massive discrepancy. Players that we hope to get ready for the senior squad have played far too few matches at a high level. I wish that the whole of youth football had been shown more flexibility. We've been able to make up for it somewhat by playing nine games in the Youth League and five in the DFB-Pokal, while a lot of our players were also in action for their national teams. But in the youth Bundesliga, the best players only had about five games at a high level, that's nothing like enough. 

So far, no-one from the 2019 title-winning squad has managed to make the breakthrough at BVB. Patrick Osterhage ended up at VfL Bochum, Tobias Raschl at Fürth, and Immanuel Pherai is in the U23s. Why is the path to the top so tough?
On the one hand, the transition to senior football is indeed difficult to navigate. On the other hand, the quality varies from year to year. If we take those born in 1998, who won the German Championship final against Bayern Munich, you can probably name eleven players who have made it as professional footballers: Pieper, Kilian, Passlack, Pulisic, Burnic, Bruun Larsen, Serra, Mangala, to name just a few.

The current U19 squad is packed full of outstanding talent. Is this potentially the best team in your time as youth director?
Hard to say. The players born in 1998 won four German Championships. In the 2019/20 season, which was unfortunately called off due to Covid, we had a forward line of Moukoko, Reyna, Knauff and Pherai - there's absolutely incredible quality there. But the team we have now are really exciting, we've put them together and developed them well. The core was already there at U15 and U16 level, then we added top players from abroad like Jamie Bynoe-Gittens, Julian Rijkhoff and Bradley Fink as well as Tom Rothe from FC St. Pauli. That's raised the bar of what was already a very good side.

As mentioned, the U19 squad includes players from England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, France and Italy. What is the thinking behind signing so many talented players from abroad?
You have to look at it on a case-by-case basis. With Fink and Gittens, we're talking about two signings from abroad who are now permanent members of the U19 squad. Abdoulaye Kamara is actually an U23 player who we brought into the U19s to help him integrate. Rijkhoff is still an U17 player - as is Filippo Mane. We made this transfer in anticipation of next season. We will therefore have two foreign players in the U19s next season in Rijkhoff and Mane. There are clubs that have far more foreign players in their squad. In our case, we bring in young players from abroad if they have a clear chance of turning professional and are thus of a correspondingly high quality.

When Bradley Fink misses a penalty kick in the sixth minute against Atletico Madrid in the Youth League quarterfinals, Ricken lowers his head for a fleeting moment. And sighs, "If you take a 1-0 lead against them, it means they have to open up." But now there is no reason for the Spaniards to loosen the shackles, they continue to entrench themselves in front of their own penalty area - and take their only chance of the game, also via the penalty spot, with Javier Curras Caballero the goalscorer. Ricken quickly suspects that this could be a fatal blow. "It's going to be tough now." He doesn't think Austrian referee Julian Weinberger made the right decision, but it's more of a throwaway remark than anything else. If he's feeling the pressure of this quarter-final, Ricken certainly isn't showing it.

In the second half, as the game becomes almost grotesquely one-sided (13-0 corners, 16-3 shots on goal), it would be completely understandable if Ricken lost his cool. But no, he remains in his bubble of calm. Although the frustration must be huge as he watches his boys struggle in vain to break through the Spanish wall, he simply stretches his legs out, puts his hands in the pockets of his parka and leans back. If you didn't know that so much is at stake in the passionate battle being played out on the pitch, you could easily think that Ricken is relaxed (which he isn't, of course). Sitting alone in the stadium and keeping his emotions under wraps is also a self-protective tactic, as illustrated by a recent example: at a Youth League game in France, Ricken sat in the technical area and quickly found himself in a dispute with the referee. "I was shown a yellow card after five minutes, and by the half-hour mark I was on the verge of being sent to the stands." 

Michael Zorc is leaving BVB in the summer after 44 years. You've been at the club for 32 years now. What still draws you to Borussia Dortmund after such a long time?
My father raised me with a love for Borussia. Coming to the stadium, especially now that it's full again, feels like coming home. As for my job, I'm very grateful that I can help young people make the most of themselves. On a sporting level, of course, but also by helping them to get the best possible academic qualifications. That's where we invest money, personnel and responsibility. I also want to offer the coaches, many of whom are still young, the best possible conditions for their development. 

If your job satisfaction remains high, do you see yourself surpassing Michael Zorc as the club's most loyal servant in 2035?
(laughs) I currently don't have anything else on my mind beyond BVB. I'm a Dortmunder, I was born here, my dad played for the youth teams, I stood in the stands as a fan. There are few better outcomes for a Dortmund boy. 

Reinhard Rauball can now look back on 22 years as president, Hans-Joachim Watzke has worked for BVB in various capacities for 21 years, and Sebastian Kehl has also served the club for 17 years. Why is continuity at the management level so important?
That is the decisive factor behind BVB's success. Carsten Cramer and Thomas Tress have also been there for a very long time. On the one hand, it's important that new people don't keep coming in and then trying to implement their own philosophy. On the other hand, in times of crisis, you can rely one-hundred percent on people who have been with the club for such a long time, because they work for the benefit of the club - not for themselves. The financial crisis in 2004/2005, the football crisis under Jürgen Klopp in 2015, the bombing in 2017 and now the two years of Covid - we got through these difficult phases thanks to proven leaders.

As you look back at 32 years, in which part of your career do you think you've been able to leave the biggest mark on the club?
I've contributed the most value as youth coordinator. But the greater emotional impact is probably from my achievements as a player, which culminated in 1997. Remembering those vital experiences in difficult times is a big part of our tradition. When we were behind in the quarter-finals against Malaga in 2012/13, fans came up to me in the stands and said: "Now we need late goals like the one you scored against La Coruna.'' Emotional anchors like that are important for the fans. Even in times when things might not be going so well.

Author: Thomas Hennecke 
Photos: Alexandre Simoes