Another Dortmund Defeat Must Leave Question Marks over Mats Hummels' Future

If Borussia Dortmund have proved one thing this season it is that the former German champions can no longer rightfully demand a seat at the top table of Bundesliga football. 

Following Saturday's 3-1 defeat to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Jurgen Klopp's team have now gone seven games against the current top four in the German top division and taken just one win from the series of showdowns.

We may recognise some of the faces who still don the black-and-yellow kits, but league contenders, "Bayern hunters" or indeed competent Champions League regulars this team are not. 

Lucien Favre's Foals have been in impressive form this season, having overturned Bayern Munich not too long ago, and really nailed home the consensus among the Dortmund support that their own side were far from a functional team. 

Gladbach—a club that works on a fraction of the budget Dortmund enjoy and routinely lose their best players like their opponents on Saturday—looked well coached, in shape and put together with precision and expertise. 

Each starting XI before the Borussia-Park clash looked even but by the time the 90 minutes were up it was all too evident that only one functioning team existed on the day. 

Yet such a contrast between the two sides—however brief it may be—offers a long-term solution to the rot at Dortmund. Klopp would do well to jot down a few notes on how Favre has continually built one effective team after another and maintained the Foals as a challenger for the top-four spots. 

Perhaps rather than consistently trying to plug a Robert Lewandowski or Mario Gotze-shaped hole, Klopp would be better throwing the whole project overboard and starting from the very beginning. 

The antithesis of any sense of renewed effort or a clean break from the previous downfall in fortunes at the Westfalenstadion are, of course, the senior stars themselves and the manner in which they continually falter on Klopp's behalf and look like mere shadows of their former selves. 

"

Dortmund, in 10th, are six points off a relegation play-off spot. Cologne, Freiburg, Hertha, Hannover, etc, still need to get results.

— Ross Dunbar (@rossdunbar93) April 11, 2015"

Lukasz Piszczek, Roman Weidenfeller and Ilkay Gundogan are all prime examples of overnight celebrities within the German game who have perhaps grown too comfortable over the past few seasons, yet nobody truly defines the rise and fall of this Dortmund era quite like Mats Hummels. 

The 26-year-old central defender was once the apple of Dortmund's eye and the allure of any of Europe's biggest clubs, yet now Hummels does little but represent the manner in which this team seems to have truly given up. 

As we reported on April 11, news broke of the German international being linked with Manchester United following his coach's remarks on the topic. "He's good enough for Manchester United. He told me he's thinking about it" declared Klopp, when asked about the prospect of Hummels making the move to England this summer. 

Most fans will, of course, read such news with a pinch of salt or indeed slump back into what seems like a perpetual tone of despair, yet when we break down the prospect of the club's star defender leaving this summer, it can quite easily be taken in a good light too. 

The sight of Patrick Herrmann bursting through a Dortmund midfield only to then outrun a slow and disorganised back line for Gladbach's second goal on Saturday was undoubtedly an embarrassing ordeal for Klopp and his club.

Frank Augstein/Associated Press

Yet rather than consider whether these defenders were capable of catching the speedy winger, we should perhaps question whether they even bothered to try. 

For a team that have spent half the season battling relegation, what true backlash would await them if they did indeed clear out a large proportion of this squad and start anew in the summer? How much worse could a clean break be than this current crisis?

The sudden demise of a team that reached the European Cup finals not so long ago has been compared to all sorts of scenarios, yet none more entertaining than the movie Space Jam. Yet unlike the 1996 blockbuster hit—in which cartoon aliens steal the talents of some of the biggest names in NBA basketball—these Dortmund players haven't simply forgotten how to play football overnight. 

There's no drive or incentive to regain their place among the best teams in Germany, and that means only one of two scenarios can now play out this summer: Dortmund either part ways with Klopp and search for a new manager with a different approach or the manager himself opts to cut his losses with these players who have defined his career as a manager to date. 

Either way, a summer of discontent awaits this troubled team. 

@sbienkowski