'Dream to travel to India with professional team' - Borussia Dortmund Managing Director Carsten Cramer

Borussia Dortmund had earlier planned to send its legends team to India in 2020.

Borussia Dortmund needs no introduction in Indian football. One of two German clubs to lift the Bundesliga title five times (Bayern are the only club with more), BVB—as Dortmund are often referred to—own a sizable share of the German football fans in the country. Aside from its rich football history and reputation for producing stars, what has appealed to fans here is perhaps Dortmund’s constant attempt of establishing foothold in India.

Having seen its plans to bring a legends team to play in India put to water due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Dortmund has since partnered with AMM Foundation to nurture talent from the grassroots in between also partnering with Indian Super League club Hyderabad FC.

Change in its approach though has not dashed chances of a team from one of Germany’s most successful football clubs visiting the country in the future. “India is country where we want to come as soon as possible,” said BVB’s Managing Director, Carsten Cramer speaking to a group of visiting journalists from the Asia-Pacific region.

“We do have the dream to travel to India with a professional team as well. But I have to be honest, and I don’t like to promise you something I’m not able to fulfil right now,” he added. “But we are considering how to do it. From our perspective, India is a passionate country when it comes to sports. Maybe cricket is still your main sport, but whenever someone represents us there, they are fixated by the interest.”

It may yet not see the light in his tenure, but Cramer hopes before retiring to travel to India “not only by myself but also with a professional team.”

That however may not be easy as Bayern found out over several years ago and Dortmund have, to some extent, discovered in recent years. “Your country is so big that one doesn’t know where to start,” the Dortmund director reasoned. “Then you have to make considerations. Do you take a special region? Do you talk to a certain club of Indian Super League in order to collaborate with them? It is very difficult.

“But the overall picture we drew regarding India is that it is a very powerful country, highly motivated, interested people, passionate in different sports and open-minded. That is the reason we agreed that we should keep some focus on India, and whatever we start, we continue and do, as I said before, in a mid- or even long-term perspective.

“Is youth development or grassroots development a part of it? It could be a approach to start from the bottom. Because the message Dortmund is able to send to the people is that we are able to transform young players to superstars,” Cramer added. “So, the pathway programme we developed with Bundesliga together is something based on real football philosophy of German football, not a marketing gimmick. We invest.”

That has been the German club’s biggest selling point over the years—nurturing talent and turning them into stars. From Ousmane Dembele, Erling Haaland, Jude Bellingham, Jadon Sancho to more recent Gio Reyna, Karim Adeyemi, Jamie Gittens, Dortmund have built a reputation for developing talent. That is what, among other things, claimed the 57-year-old makes the club an attraction for local and international fans.

“As a club, we try and reach the people in this area of the body (pointing to the heart), we are more than a football club,” said Cramer, who has been Dortmund’s Managing Director since 2020.

“We are a challenger, a hunter. We come from Dortmund, which not the biggest city in Germany, not even a wealthy city. But it’s Dortmund, a small city with just 600,000 [approx.] inhabitants, that competes with clubs from London, Milan, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris—big cities with big clubs. We will never buy a superstar; we develop young players into them. We enjoy seeing that Sancho needed Borussia Dortmund to rediscover his form, and we are happy to see Bellingham scoring for Real Madrid and Haaland for Manchester City,” he said.

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