“Unfortunately you have forgotten about Davor Suker,” says Edin Terzic (Menden, 1982), smiling on the videoconference screen, after listening to his interlocutor list the 1997-98 Real Madrid squad without mentioning the Osijek striker. The son of a Croatian mother and a Bosnian father, Terzic was a teenage Borussia Dortmund fan the first time the Ruhr club faced Madrid, in the Champions League semifinals. The man, one of the most surprising revelations on the benches this season, has history etched in stone. This Saturday he will lead Dortmund against Madrid in the final at Wembley.
Ask. It’s true: Suker, Redondo, Hierro, Roberto Carlos, Seedorf, Mijatovic, Raúl… Don’t you think that the current Madrid squad is inferior in quality to that one?
Answer. I remember perfectly the day the goal broke. Dortmund then had a great team full of brilliant players and had just won the Champions League the previous season. Comparing teams separated by 20 years is very difficult. I hear people say that football has become faster, more physical, more tactical and technical, but if you go back and watch the Madrid-Barça classics of 2004 or 2005 you see that this rhythm and this level existed for a long time. I would analyze Madrid of the last decade: it has won five Champions Leagues and has been undergoing transformation for some time.
Q. How do you explain Madrid’s way of competing, which of the six qualifying matches it has played has drawn three, won one on penalties and won two others after the referees disallowed goals for its rivals in controversial situations?
R. With the departure of Cristiano and Benzema they lost very important players. But they have done something that no one else in the world of football has managed to do so well: a generational transition. They still have highly experienced players like Modric and Kroos, but there is a feeling that with the young talents they have assembled they will be able to compete at the same level in the next decade.
Q. Madrid won the last eight Champions League finals it played in. Don’t you think this is the most unequal final in recent history?
R. I congratulate Madrid for the last eight, but the only thing that matters to me now is that they don’t win the next one. Unequal or not, it is a single game and if there is a team that has shown that in 90 minutes anything is possible, it is this Dortmund. The good thing is that for us it is not a mission: missions are completed or failed. For us it is a dream and because of dreams you get excited and fight.
Q. City and Leipzig prevented Toni Kroos from thinking when he received the ball and pushed Madrid to the limit. Is putting pressure on Kroos the key?
R. Kroos is an extraordinary player who is a big part of Madrid’s game because he carries the ball from the first third of the field to the second, and from the second to the last. But Modric can do it too. And also Bellingham, and Camavinga and Tchouameni with their own style, of course. If we only focus on Kroos and free up the others, air pockets will open, they will take the ball to their extremes and have one-on-one situations, or they will put passes behind our defenders.
Q. Bayern followed Madrid’s lead and the attacks became slow and time passed until everything was decided in the last minute. Is the Bayern armistice scenario Madrid’s specialty?
R. This is its greatest quality: that you don’t see them coming. It seems like you have everything under control and ten seconds later you have scored a goal, given a penalty or shown you a red card out of nowhere. This power derives from their confidence: they know they are ready. In the first leg against Bayern there is a very clear opportunity for Sané at 30 seconds and if you look at what Madrid does immediately afterwards, it defines them: they don’t hit a ball, they spend the time feeling safe, with quality, and what they produce It’s a backlash. It is a test of experience. That’s what we face.
“If Madrid presses high, neutralize the speed of Vinicius and Rodrygo”
Q. Today the big teams try to press very high. Have you thought that Madrid is the one that does it the least?
R. Ancelotti has been very intelligent in understanding what best suits his team. He has very fast players and I don’t think that for them the smartest idea is to constantly press high as this would end up neutralizing the fifth gear of Vinicius, Bellingham or Rodrygo. If you only recover the ball in the opponent’s area you will never see Vinicius’ speed.
Q. In 2022 you sold Haaland, in 2023 you sold Bellingham, and now you are playing in the final. How do you explain it?
R. Playing as a team. That’s our style. We would love to have Haaland and Bellingham with us, but this is our reality. These players left Dortmund because they believed they would have a better chance of winning the Champions League elsewhere. To replace Haaland we had to replace his 42 goals. Last season we did it, not with a new nine, because Haller got sick, but with Guerreiro and Bellingham. Between the two of them they helped us score those 42 goals. And last year Bellingham went to Madrid and Guerreiro to Bayern. This is our way of doing things! To get here you either spend a lot of money or you make all the market decisions completely right or you need time. This is what has put us in this situation: we have found ourselves; We have found the power source within the equipment. For many months we were not ready to win all the games we played; but now we are ready to beat anyone.
“Hummels will go for it. That Vini wins the first duel? OK! Another will cover you.”
Q. Against PSG, Hummels always knew how to guess which way Mbappé would go one-on-one, and thus he stole the ball from him. Is that trained or innate?
R. It is experience in big games and it is preparation. He analyzes everything and studies each of his direct opponents very well. My only wish is that he does it one more time before the season ends. You can’t simulate the quality of Mbappé or Vinicius in training. The most important thing we have to know is that we are going to lose duels. Mats knows it: he is going to lose a duel. But if that happens, he will also have to be sure that someone behind him will be looking out for him. With that certainty he must go all out in each hand to hand. Because if he goes all out, Mats will win a lot of balls for us. And when he doesn’t win them, another one of us will. That’s what you need to gain confidence. That Vinicius wins the first duel? OK. And may he win the second, and the third, and the fourth. But then we will win the ball. If as a centre-back you arm yourself with this mental scheme your confidence is strengthened. This way you end up making the best decisions.
Q. They say their strong point is psychology. How did you recover Jadon Sancho, who in December seemed like a useless player at United and is now an undisputed starter for a Champions League finalist?
R. I have to be a psychologist! As a coach you have to bring out the best in each person and you only achieve this if you help them, if you challenge them, even if you annoy them. Jadon is young and special and you have to give special things to special players. I would love to just be a coach, but in this job sometimes you have to be an older brother, sometimes a friend, a teacher, or a judge! You have to make sure you can play all these roles but you always have to be more of a coach than a judge. Jadon is brilliant and I’m happy he’s among us. At Wembley he will be able to show that when he returned to Dortmund at Christmas he made the right decision.
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