2020/21 DFB Cup final: RB Leipzig and Borussia Dortmund's date with destiny
The 2020/21 DFB Cup final on Thursday will be a seismic moment in German football no matter the winner. RB Leipzig and Julian Nagelsmann are seeking a first piece of major silverware in their still short history and career, while a youthful Borussia Dortmund team spearheaded by Jadon Sancho and Erling Haaland can prove they truly have what it takes to win trophies.
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The rather unusual absence of holders Bayern Munich in this year's final has presented Leipzig and Dortmund with a unique chance. It's only the third time in the last decade that the 20-time winners haven't appeared in Berlin's showpiece game. Their shock second-round elimination to Holstein Kiel immediately thrust RB and BVB into the roles of favourites for the cup, and they have indeed fulfilled those expectations.
The pair have made it to the Olympiastadion - the venue for the final for the 37th year in a row - in pretty untroubled fashion. Very little separates the teams in terms of their records this campaign: Leipzig boast the best defence in the competition with only one goal conceded to Borussia's two, while BVB lead the cup scoring stakes with 16 goals to RB's 14.
Die Roten Bullen have seen off Nuremberg (3-0), Augsburg (3-0), Bochum (4-0), Wolfsburg (2-0) and Werder Bremen (2-1 a.e.t.). Die Schwarzgelben have got past Duisburg (5-0), Eintracht Braunschweig 2-0), Paderborn (3-2 a.e.t.), Borussia Mönchengladbach (1-0) and Kiel (5-0).
The question now is which seemingly unstoppable force will move the other immovable object.
Dortmund have done the league double over their opponents this season, winning 3-1 in Leipzig and then 3-2 at the Signal Iduna Park only last weekend. They're now unbeaten in seven encounters and have only ever lost two out of 10. RB, though, are six points better off in the table for 2020/21 and on course to seal the runner-up spot for the second time in the Bundesliga.
However, this is the first non-league meeting between the two, and as coaches and experts frequently like to point out: the cup has its own rules. There is no favourite in this final.
Watch: Sancho led BVB to a 3-2 win over Leipzig only last weekend
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Leipzig were underdogs the first and so far only other time they made it to Berlin, and were ultimately beaten 3-0 by Bayern in 2019. They're now back only two years later in the week before their 12th anniversary.
The club's meteoric rise from creation on 19 May 2009 to reaching DFB Cup finals and UEFA Champions League semi-finals has been well documented. But such has been the speed of that ascent, they now see silverware as a must. And two trophies from the state Saxony Cup in 2011 and 2013 are not what they want to show off anymore.
Leipzig has come to represent one of Germany's biggest cities once bereft of top-level football, as well as an entire region. They and Union Berlin are the only current Bundesliga teams based in what was once East Germany. No team from that area of the country has ever won the DFB Cup since it was re-started under that name in 1952/53. Energie Cottbus and Union are the only other clubs from the former East to even made the final since reunification in 1991.
Watch: The Nagelsmann norms behind Leipzig's success
"For the region here, it's just very valuable that RB is playing good and successful football in the Bundesliga," said Leipzig head coach Nagelsmann in the final's pre-match programme. "The first title would be incredibly important. It'd be great for the club, for the region, for the people here."
And whether he likes it or not, Nagelsmann himself is a sub-plot in the final. This is his third-from-last game in charge of Leipzig before he takes over at Bayern. He has taken the club to another level during his two seasons at the helm, but he is yet to win a trophy at senior level.
Of course, he's still only 33 and did once lead Hoffenheim to the U19 Bundesliga title, but there's the feeling a winner's medal will give him that extra standing when he arrives in Munich. He'll be a trophy-winning coach taking charge of a club where silverware is in their DNA.
And for the youngest permanent head coach in Bundesliga history, there's also the chance to become the youngest coach to lift the DFB Cup. That record is currently held by 35-year-old Hans-Dieter Tippenhauer when he led Fortuna Düsseldorf to the honour in 1979. The youngest coach to lose a cup final, by the way, is Hermann Gerland with Bochum in 1988, who was also 33.
Watch: Nagelsmann discusses the final after last week’s game in Dortmund
Youth is also a defining feature of this Dortmund squad. Of all the players to feature for the club this season, only Marco Reus, Axel Witsel, Mats Hummels, Lukasz Piszczek and the two goalkeepers are 30 or older.
Jude Bellingham, Gio Reyna, Youssoufa Moukoko, Ansgar Knauff and Reinier are all still teenagers, while their attacking figureheads Sancho and Haaland are only 21 and 20 respectively. Bellingham is the youngest player to score in the DFB Cup this season, 77 days past his 17th birthday, while Sancho has had a hand in more goals than any other player in the competition.
There is no doubting the level of talent in this BVB team, and those players have guided the club to its 11th DFB Cup final - and first since 2016/17 when they last lifted the trophy - in almost untroubled fashion over the previous rounds.
Watch: Dortmund’s newest rising stars
The question they now have to answer is if they can show they can go all the way and silence those still unsure about them. Can they emulate the last Borussia team to win it, featuring Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Shinji Kagawa and Sokratis, or Jürgen Klopp's double winners of 2011/12 with hat-trick hero Robert Lewandowski, Ilkay Gündogan, Jakob Blaszczykowski, Sebastian Kehl and Roman Weidenfeller?
Captain Reus has promised the team "will deliver when we have to". He is no stranger to finals, with this the sixth of his club career across competitions. There will be responsibility on the likes of him, Hummels (eight finals) and Piszczek (six) to guide their less experienced teammates through the Leipzig encounter.
If they do that, it will bring the cup back to Dortmund for the fifth time. While still 15 fewer than Bayern and one behind Bremen, it will draw BVB level with arch-rivals Schalke (and Eintracht Frankfurt) as the joint-third most successful clubs in the competition.
While a top-four finish and UEFA Champions League qualification remains the club's ultimate goal for the campaign, a trophy would of course be a great end to a turbulent season in which coach Lucien Favre was dismissed in December. Marco Rose will take over for 2021/22 with the task of developing this still green team even further to once again challenge Bayern's supremacy - and also get back ahead of Leipzig. His job will no doubt be much easier if he meets a squad of young players full of belief having won silverware to back up the at-time brilliant performances they have delivered this season.
A number of those have come under interim coach Edin Terzic. He's stepped out of the shadows as assistant to Favre, having previously worked under Hannes Wolf in the BVB youth teams and also Slaven Bilic at Besiktas and West Ham United.
He joked that although he's grown a few more grey hairs in the hotseat, it has "answered a number of personal question marks". He's a BVB man through and through, explaining he's gone to the final before "in my car, on a plane, a fan train and with the staff, but this is the first year on the team bus". He once even flew to Berlin from Istanbul with half his belongings in cases to see the 2014/15 final against Wolfsburg after his time at Besiktas had come to an end.
Also only 38 himself, which makes the coaching pair of Terzic and Nagelsmann the youngest to ever take charge in a DFB Cup final, he no doubt knows what a winner's medal will do for him, and whether he returns to his role as assistant when Rose arrives. It will also earn him a place in club history as a cup-winning coach alongside Klopp, Thomas Tuchel, Horst Köppel and Hermann Eppenhoff.
It's a final that could become so defining in many ways. Both clubs, players and coaches know what's on the line - and it's not just the cup.
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