What a weird place this thread has become in the last few pages. Hats off to
@Cascarino for a great and calm post; I wouldn't be able to make those points without getting extremely snarky about some of things that have been said about Dortmund.
On German posters, I'll add that we likely don't have the most hardcore fans of their respective German clubs on here. Most posters laughing at German posters defending BL teams other than their own, likely wouldn't want to be found dead on any other football forum. The German posters on here likely have a very different mindset about football, and aren't as partisan. I don't know why that has to be ridiculed.
They don’t need arab or oil money to turn their brain into smart to understand that leaving player in their final of the contract is high risk and especially knowing Bayern has been taking advantage of it. Given how much money they have been getting from selling the likes of Dembele & Aubameyang for ridiculous high fees and combine with cheap top local talent players in bundesliga that they can approach, the conditions suit to Dortmund‘s financially and at the same time be more ambitious instead of accepting to get bullied by Bayern.
You never really respond to concrete counterarguments; you just keep saying high-level stuff that's been refuted. For example: what could Dortmund
actually have done to stop Lewandowski from going to Bayern, giving he didn't want to renew, didn't want to go elsewhere, and was running out his contract? Bench him, thus ruining their own season only to see him go to Bayern afterwards anyway?
Also, if Dortmund are a feeder club, how do you all explain them fighting to keep Sancho? And if they need to think big and reach higher, why is it wrong of them to buy Haaland with a release clause, if the alternative is to not get him and buy someone of lesser quality instead?
It seems Dortmund have to have their cake and eat it at all times; I'd like one of their detractors to give some concrete examples of what Dortmund could do better with player management to become more competitive.
Nothing "elitist" about it. There are certain traits of being a feeder club. A basic quality is that club has a major portion of revenue from transfer in its balance sheet, that a club recruits to sell for x times profit few years later. Haaland and recently Bellingham recruitment come to mind. Now, please don't tell me they signed Haaland as a long term recruitment.
If you compare them with even PL bottom 10 teams, not one team you can just point out and say yes they are feeder club. Is Newcastle a feeder club? No. Burnley, Brighton, Villa? No. Yes, players do leave lower club for better opportunity but there is a difference. These clubs do not "recruit to sell", it happens that their player perform well and other club come with bag of money they can't refuse. There is a subtle difference of being helpless to sell and farming players to sell.
Dortmund is absolutely a feeder club.
I really can't understand where this is coming from. Newcastle, Burnley, and Brighton are more focused on their own development than Dortmund, Leipzig, or Monchengladbach, who only buy to sell? Christ on a bike. What do you think any EPL club outside the absolute top would say if they could get someone of Haaland's ability on the condition of including a hefty release clause in his contract?
A more pertinent question to ask would be: why don’t La Liga, Serie A and Ligue 1 fans get the same reaction from us? There must be a reason, no?
There's far fewer posters from those countries on here. And anyway, that stuff about Ligue 1 being a 'farmer's league' is also strongly contested by French posters. Other than that, it's the same dynamic, with the French posters on here having a wider and more nuanced interest in football than most United posters (by the nature of the forum; you'd have the reverse dynamic on a PSG dynamic, I suppose), and being happy to discuss other Ligue 1 clubs in a reasonable way.