Marco Rose has already achieved a remarkable success as coach of Borussia Dortmund, albeit with the help of the ongoing history.

The old longing for the unreachable Jürgen Klopp has almost completely faded.

Predecessors like Lucien Favre or Thomas Tuchel still had to be constantly measured against Klopp, athletically, but also as types.

In the meantime, this old reflex no longer plays a major role, although in the case of Rose it is still unclear whether he will be remembered as a Dortmund coach who has reached the hearts and led the team to titles. Or as a further attempt to build on great times that did not work as hoped. Probably with this knowledge, too, the Dortmund managing director Hans-Joachim Watzke shouted at the shareholders' meeting on Tuesday: "I have great confidence in Marco Rose!"

The coach can use this backing because there is a lot of puzzles around the club about Rose's work.

The results in the Bundesliga are good, but the team's performances were often mediocre.

The elimination from the Champions League in the group stage is a shock, after all, after two and a half years at BVB, his predecessor Favre, who had been dismissed from BVB, always made it to the round of 16.

Four days after the dark evening in Lisbon, on which the 1: 3 at Sporting sealed the end, however, an impressive victory at VfL Wolfsburg succeeded, which left some observers in a state of acute confusion.

Exciting championship possible

Sports director Michael Zorc finds the extreme reactions to these two football games "almost bizarre". First everything will be "written in ruins" before a real "top game" against FC Bayern is suddenly announced just 90 minutes later, Zorc told the "Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung". A top game in which BVB can even become top of the Bundesliga if they win. Yes, what now? Wreckage or title contender?

It is actually complicated to make a sound assessment of this BVB and his still fairly new coach. The Bundesliga table looks good, and if Munich continues to struggle with their vaccination and sponsorship problems, an exciting battle for the German championship may really be possible again. At least if the BVB trainer manages to develop the great potential in the squad on a permanent basis.

Should the Dortmunders win against Bayern Munich on Saturday (6.30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga and on Sky) and take the lead in the table, the enthusiasm for the coach will also be huge. If, on the other hand, the game is lost, it will be said: with Rose it will be nothing again. The reason for this height of fall is not only the tendency of the soccer public to go to extremes, but also the fact that BVB has so far not really made any reliable impressions this season, but has provided a lot of contradictions.

On the one hand, the team has a quality that has been missing for a long time: the club wins many of those weaker games in which in previous years the points that were ultimately missing for the championship were regularly lost. On the other hand, there are an unusually large number of these less convincing performances. The sluggish football development is also astonishing, as it was still assumed in the summer that Edin Terzic had prepared the takeover by Rose in the best possible way. The interim coach has replaced the more sedate and more control-oriented Favre football with a more intense style with more depth.

Anyone who criticizes the fact that the team played better under Terzic will hear from Rose that the many failures of important players "in no way flowed into the ratings". The injuries are actually a plausible explanation for the fluctuations, players like Erling Haaland, Mats Hummels or Raphael Guerreiro cannot be replaced without loss of substance. Especially since even the professionals who were deployed were often still in the build-up phase after injuries and were still far from playing in good shape. But internally, even Rose doesn't really want to accept this statement, at least if the reports from the cabin are correct.

As with FC Bayern, where intimate details about how to deal with the unvaccinated players became known, someone in Dortmund disclosed to the “Sport-Bild” processes from the inner workings of the team. Rose was very angry after the 3-1 defeat in Lisbon, which can also be explained by the absence of Hummels, Guerreiro and Haaland, and loudly demanded: “Grow up!” The performance in the important encounter was “not Dortmund -like “. The coach explicitly mentioned the controversial but easily avoidable red card for Emre Can.

Four days later in Wolfsburg, Can played anyway, scored with a penalty and was then heartily embraced by Rose.

Like Klopp, Rose is sometimes rough, but he is not resentful, and in public he always protects his players.

Even when Marco Reus publicly criticized the coach's system after the 2-1 defeat in Leipzig, Rose remained forgiving and showed understanding for his captain's anger.

Now is the big game against Bayern, finally almost all players are healthy, he can "draw on the full", said Rose on Friday.

Maybe this is the beginning of a phase in which this team and their coach are finally showing how well they really go together.