Heartbreak and solace in Dortmund

A final day like no other

A party. A funeral. And then something else altogether.

The regional trains into Dortmund, packed with fans who had followed the instruction to wear yellow for the final day of the season, bounced along the tracks on Saturday morning. The trains from the city centre to the stadium did the same.

In comparison, things were peaceful outside the ground as the game approached. The atmosphere, the occasion, was soaked up. A buzz fluttered through the ground as the 90-minute main event approached, 90 minutes planned for singing and dancing before the real celebrations, the ones 81,365 fans had waited 11 years for, could begin.

But they never did.

It was fitting that, in this season, the dream was kept alive by a goal conceded by Bayern Munich in another city. BVB were sixth at Christmas. They needed Bayern to collapse to help create a title race. It’s only right the outcome of that race ultimately depended on whether or not Bayern could hold their nerve and it’s appropriate that they almost didn’t.

Until they did. What happened on the pitch broke hearts in the stands. As the final whistle blew and the players slumped to the ground, an unheard of silence gripped the Westfalenstadion. A capacity crowd arrived for a party but there was nothing left to do but accept it had become a funeral.

Even at funerals the silence has to end. And so it did, with the Yellow Wall taking it upon itself to puncture the quiet to lift the players off the ground, to comfort them. Any stadium will make you a hero when you win, few will offer comfort and support when you have broken their hearts. The Yellow Wall found the strength, such is their love for their club, to remind the players that everyone is in this together. The strength to thank them. And the strength to insist that even this experience, gut-wrenching as it is, would not break the bond between the fans and the players.

The fact that that spirit has been revitalised in Dortmund, reborn under Edin Terzić, is the legacy this season will leave.

When appointed as head coach a year ago, the Dortmund born and bred asked the fans, people just like him, to be hungrier and louder than ever, to give them the chance to celebrate more than ever. The chance was there. Another one begins in a little more than two months.