Personae Non Gratae — Borussia Dortmund

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang - The show-off: BVB gave Pierre-Em...

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang - The show-off: BVB gave Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang the most successful years of his career up to that point.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang - The show-off: BVB gave Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang the most successful years of his career up to that point. He scored 98 goals for the black and yellows between 2013 and 2018 and made the leap to global stardom. But his move to Arsenal was accompanied by strike threats and openly communicated transfer demands.

He then chauffeured himself to the airport in a gold-colored SUV and sped away in a private jet. Understatement and gratitude look different. Auba later apologized to the fans via Instagram, but many in Dortmund did not buy the show.

Once the extroverted top scorer had fluttered away to the Premier League, a little peace finally returned to the club - even if Borussia could not really replace his goals.

Gerd Niebaum - The megalomaniac: he led Borussia

Gerd Niebaum - The megalomaniac: he led Borussia Dortmund to triumph and to the brink of bankruptcy.

Dortmund to triumph and to the brink of bankruptcy. Under Niebaum the club won the 1989 DFB Cup, league titles in 1995, 1996 and 2002, the Champions League in 1997 and the Intercontinental Cup the same year. He wanted to push Bayern Munich into the shadows.

He achieved a great deal, but lost all sense of proportion. For the Champions League banquet he flew his favorite band to Munich. He invested in a giant stadium, paid enormous salaries, took Dortmund public and initially earned handsomely from it.

Employees mockingly began to call him Doctor God because he had transformed Borussia into the BVB corporation, meddling in everything and apparently living in his own world. When the bubble burst and his mismanagement became visible, Dortmund were facing a nine-figure deficit. At one of the most turbulent annual meetings in club history, supporters accused him bluntly of having destroyed the club.

Only the new leadership around Rauball and Watzke was able to prevent insolvency after Niebaum finally gave up his last post in 2005. His fall was as deep as his rise had been. He lost court cases over the rent on his huge law offices, had to keep paying until the contract expired, and later lost his license to practice law because of financial collapse. Serious accusations followed in later court proceedings, including embezzlement and forged signatures. Since then he has rarely been seen again at Signal Iduna Park. There was no grand farewell for the president who first led Dortmund to heaven and then to hell.

Sergej W. - The attacker: at 7:15 p.m.

Sergej W. - The attacker: at 7:15 p.m. on April 11, 2017, three explosives packed with metal pins detonated in Dortmund-Hoechsten.

on April 11, 2017, three explosives packed with metal pins detonated in Dortmund-Hoechsten. They had been placed in a hedge to hit the passing Borussia team bus on its way to the stadium for the Champions League quarterfinal against Monaco. Defender Marc Bartra suffered a broken wrist and shrapnel injuries, while a police officer escorting the bus was hospitalized with acoustic trauma.

The football world was in shock. The attacker's perverse logic was that he had bet on the fall of the BVB share price and wanted to profit through options once the market reacted to the news. On November 27, 2018, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison for 28 attempted murders committed out of greed.

Florian Homm - The speculator: at the height

Florian Homm - The speculator: at the height of Dortmund's financial crisis in the summer of 2004, a flamboyant helper suddenly appeared - fund manager Florian Homm.

of Dortmund's financial crisis in the summer of 2004, a flamboyant helper suddenly appeared - fund manager Florian Homm. The Hessian, an MBA graduate from Harvard, had become notorious during the era of Germany's Neuer Markt for making money as a kind of undertaker of bankrupt companies. In 2004 he entered at BVB and helped save the club with a capital increase of 20 million euros.

But Homm also knew that whoever had the money had the power, and he wanted that power in Dortmund. He publicly undermined coach Bert van Marwijk and expanded his influence until the old leadership around Niebaum was pushed out. Later, in his autobiography, Homm wrote that he had originally wanted to make money with BVB and sell the club to two Russian oligarchs, but only realized after entering how bad the situation really was and decided to rescue it because the losses would otherwise be unbearable.

In that sense, he did indeed help save Dortmund's license in 2005. He later sold all his shares. Fans, however, had had enough of the horse-trading and staged the famous Not for Sale march before a home game against Bochum. By 2007 Homm had disappeared from view amid the financial crisis. He later resurfaced in Venezuela, was seen wounded, and in 2013 was arrested in Florence's Uffizi Gallery. Such was the end of a financial juggler who saved BVB and used them at the same time.