Dortmund and money - it has always been a delicate relationship. After the intoxicating Champions League triumph of 1997, many skeptics asked how the club were financing all of it. The luxury squad, including former Italy-based stars Julio Cesar, Juergen Kohler, Andreas Moeller, Karl-Heinz Riedle, Stefan Reuter and Matthias Sammer, cost a fortune.\n\nOn the very day of the final the Sueddeutsche Zeitung suggested that BVB actually lacked the cash to keep fueling the star ensemble.
Gerd Niebaum recommended that the article be thrown deep into the trash. But the journalists were right.\n\nQuite unexpectedly, Dortmund sold Karl-Heinz Riedle to Liverpool in the summer of 1997 for just 2.5 million euros. The result was that the club could show black figures again and keep its financial imbalance under the lid a little longer.
The trick worked in the short term, but Ottmar Hitzfeld saw clearly what was happening.\n\nHe no longer received the usual generous sums for new stars and, frustrated by friction with Niebaum and Sammer, withdrew to the newly created post of sporting director, where he achieved very little. He later proved his coaching class again at Bayern, winning five more league titles there. His successor Nevio Scala never really reached the team, and after the greatest success in club history Dortmund ended the following season only tenth, without the valuable extra income from Europe.