Perhaps not everyone knows that as Dortmund's top scorer in the team for three consecutive seasons, Lewandowski had received official authorization from Dortmund Club a season ago, authorizing him to find a new boss by himself, and then after the end of this season, as long as the opponent's bid is appropriate, Lewandowski can transfer and leave.

The official Dortmund club also promised Lewandowski that he would never make things difficult for the Polish scorer on the transfer issue.

It is probably hard for people to imagine why Dortmund club would let its number one scorer leave the team so much? Isn’t it normal to keep him through a contract renewal?

This has to mention Dortmund's fiscal policy, because in the past, many stars were signed with exaggerated contracts, which led to the club's financial burden. When the team's performance was not satisfactory, the pressure from high salaries erupted, causing Dortmund to fall into a serious financial crisis. They had to sell the stars to maintain operations and avoid bankruptcy.

The club's fiscal deficit at that time was as high as 98 million euros!

How difficult was Dortmund during that period?

They even borrowed money from their archenemy Bayern Munich!

Bayern Munich lent Dortmund two million euros, with an interest rate of 8%.

You should know that in 2000, Dortmund was the only listed club in the Bundesliga. The opening price was 11 euros that year. Even Bayern Munich's general manager Henes was attracted to buy a lot of Dortmund's shares. But in the end, due to poor management, Dortmund's club was heavily in debt, and its stock price fell again and again.

In the 2003-2004 season, Dortmund, who participated in the Champions League playoffs as the third in the league, was eliminated by Bruges in the playoffs, and the Champions League prize money revenue was ruined. In the stock market, Dortmund's stock fell sharply, setting a maximum drop of 16% on the same day. The stock price once fell to 2.38 euros per share. It was the lowest stock price of Dortmund after listing.

Now twelve years have passed, and Dortmund's stock price has not risen to four euros today...

In 2002, on the one hand, he had just won the league championship, and it would cost money to continue to deepen competition with Bayern Munich this season. On the other hand, the bankruptcy of Kilch Group brought financial crisis to the Bundesliga team, and Dortmund was not spared. The Dortmund club, which needed to use money, hit the attention of making money on the sacred Temple West** Stadium in the minds of Dortmund fans. They sold 94% of the stadium's shares to the Moors Ries Group, a subsidiary of the commercial bank, in exchange for 75.4 million euros. At the same time, they gained the power to continue using the West** Stadium with a rent of 17 million euros per year, which lasted until 2017.

At that time, Dortmund might never have thought that this would become the last straw that almost crushed them in the future.

2005 was the most sad time for Dortmund. At that time, Dortmund was even on the verge of bankruptcy. On March 15, 2005, the German Football League will conduct financial qualification reviews for each club. However, at this time, Dortmund's debt problems broke out. The key is the debt problems of the Moors Rees Group and Dortmund who bought the stadium. At this time, a debt of 15 million euros between Dortmund and Moors Rees was about to expire, and they must start repaying the money next season.

But Dortmund can no longer afford the money. If he had to repay the debt, Dortmund would have to declare bankruptcy. It should be noted that according to statistics, by mid-2006, Dortmund's total debt would reach a record 134.7 million euros.

Fortunately, after negotiations between the Dortmund Club and the Moors Reese Group reached an agreement. The Dortmund Club received more than 75% of the Moors Reese Group. The Moors Reese Group agreed to postpone the debt of 15 million euros that should have been repaid from next season.

At that time, Hans Vatsk, the current CEO of the Dortmund club, had just taken office for a few months.

The success of this negotiation has given Dortmund a critical respite.

The new club CEO Vatsk cooperated with Oliver Koren of Morgan Stanley Investment Bank. Koren noticed that although Dortmund was in a financial mess and his performance was not good, the fans' loyalty was the highest in the Bundesliga. The evidence is that when the team played, the attendance rate of West** Stadium was rising.

They then contacted Roland Berger Management Consulting Company and a team of lawyers and auditors to draft a revival and financial restructuring plan for Dortmund.

They received a loan of 80 million euros from Morgan Stanley, of which 51 million were used to buy back 51% of the ownership of West** Stadium. This helped the club greatly reduce the rent they had to pay every year and relieve the club's financial pressure. The other 20 million were used to balance debts, negotiate with creditors, and try to delay the repayment period and lease repayment period of the Dortmund club. Rossicki was sold,

Moroso and other superstars earned funds, and at the same time terminated their high salary expenses, and all players who stayed in the team reduced their salary. They invested zero or less in the transfer market. The contracts of various sponsors were extended. Despite the opposition of Dortmund fans to sell the six-year naming rights of West** Stadium, the stadium was changed to a difficult name "Iduna Signal Park Stadium", but this action brought the club a 20 million euro naming fee...

All is to pay off the huge debt as soon as possible so that Dortmund can stand up again.

During the financial crisis, Dortmund was used to tightening his belt to survive, which was what they had to do in order to survive. Dortmund was very stingy in terms of player salary. After all, player salary is a fixed annual expenditure, and it is of course the most effective way to use it.

In fact, as early as 2003, because Dortmund was eliminated in the Champions League qualifiers, there were rumors that the club asked players to voluntarily reduce their salary by 20%.

Before that, Dortmund spent as much as 52 million euros on player salaries every year, which was ranked among the top 32 in European clubs that year - the number of participating teams in the Champions League, but Dortmund was not eligible to participate in the Champions League.

The high wage investment did not bring about a return that matched performance and economic benefits, and also caused the club to fall into a financial crisis and overwhelmed.

Later, the club controlled their annual salary expenditure to about 35 million euros by selling high-paying players and forcing other players to reduce their salary.

However, after Votsk served as the team's CEO, Dortmund began to rebuild, and the first step was to reduce wages - for Dortmund clubs, the annual salary expenditure of 35 million euros is still an unbearable burden.

Finally, after hard work, the Dortmund Club controlled the first-team players' salaries to around 28 million euros per year. Thinking about the 52 million euros during Dortmund's "wealthy" period, it is really sad.

After that, Dortmund was very stingy in the salary expenses of players. When Gotze renewed his contract with the club in 2012, his annual salary was 4.6 million yuan, which was the maximum salary of the first team. Before that, his annual salary was one million euros...

Before Gotze, Dortmund's maximum salary belonged to the captain Kyle, with three million euros.

You should know that in the just-concluded 2012-2013 season, Dortmund's first-team wage expenditure has not yet recovered to the 52 million euro level ten years ago.

It is conceivable how stingy Dortmund is today in this regard.

It is also because of this "stinginess" that Dortmund is difficult to retain their players.

For example, why did Shinji Kagawa go to Manchester United?

On the one hand, Manchester United is very attractive to Shinji Kagawa, and on the other hand, Dortmund and Shinji Kagawa were bothered by the annual salary issue for a long time when they renewed the contract. In the end, because of Manchester United's intervention, Dortmund offered Kagawa a new contract of 3 million annual salary, which was twice the annual salary he received at that time. However, Shinji Kagawa still rejected Dortmund and chose to join Manchester United, with a salary of 6 million euros per year. This salary is twice as high as the three million yuan Borussia Dortmund gave!
Chapter completed!