Opinion: Borussia Dortmund’s Cup Kit is a Metaphor for this Season | OneFootball

When Puma and Dortmund announced their “History Remade” cup kit before the start of the season, it turned quite a few heads. Not because it’s a patchwork of four BVB kit designs from their most impressive cup campaigns, including the 2013 run to the UEFA Champions League Final. No, it turned heads because of the aesthetically displeasing, asymmetrical patchwork that looks like a middle school art project. But I digress.

When this kit was announced, Puma’s Senior Director of Product Line Management Teamsport Apparel, Marco Meuller, stated:

Sure, it made sense to create a kit like this: Dortmund just came off their latest Champions League Cup run, becoming unlikely finalists in the 2023/24 season. So why not design a kit that reflects the club’s past success? Yet the BVB board seemed a little too obsessed with the past, as they named former player Nuri Sahin as manager for the new season. He was relieved just four matches after the winter break. Let me tell you, this new cup kit will undoubtedly have a lasting story to tell about Dortmund’s journey.

Parallels can easily be drawn between Borussia Dortmund’s tactics and the creation of this kit at the hands of Puma’s manufacturing team. Whether Sahin or Kovac, BVB’s tactics have been inconsistent, erratic, and downright displeasing to watch. But from the right angle, there’s something special there; something beautiful. This team has won two matches this season by six-goal margins! Yet the cornucopia of ideas and information thrust upon the squad have left them chimeric at best, and internecine at worst. These players are the cup kit.

While Nuri Sahin overloaded his players with too many ideas in the preseason, the creative team at Puma was also collaborating through a process with far too many ideas and an utter lack of concrete direction. Their result was a Frankensteinian monstrosity designed to showcase the best of Dortmund. It was something the designers likely wanted fans to remember, a kit creation to be celebrated.

But it’s a patchwork kit, just as this is a patchwork season. We’ve watched our team transition from Sahin to Tullberg and now Kovač, yet we are no higher in the Bundesliga table than at the turn of the year. The cohesion of our squad is also akin to this cup kit: nonexistent. The designers at Puma took the best of Dortmund and slapped the pieces together with the blind hope that it would work. Could the same not be said about Watzke, Kehl, and company as they planned the current squad?

Not all hope is lost, however. This kit, despite Dortmund’s domestic struggles, has still been dawned in BVB’s most exciting wins this season. They knocked out both Sporting CP and Lille from the Champions League after all. Despite a few embarrassing losses in the competition, it's worth noting that even a torn bedsheet can still double as clothing.

Yet here we are, eleventh place in the Bundesliga, but with a Champions League Quarterfinal in just a few weeks. The season feels over, but it’s not. Our patchwork team, just like our patchwork Cup Kit, is ugly to look at most of the time, but the pieces are holding together well enough to resemble something: A kit? A team? Champions League Quarterfinalists?

In Frankenstein, the Creature outlived its creator, Dr. Frankenstein. Similarly, this cup kit has outlived Dortmund’s prospect of a successful season. But the Creature did not survive to the book’s conclusion. I fear this cup kit’s end is imminent... especially with a Champions League Quarterfinal against FC Barcelona looming on the horizon.