The added time was already running. If it stayed 2:1, Borussia Dortmund were relegated. Three-time German champions, the first German club to win a European trophy, would then face a dark financial future.\n\nThe fact that only a year later they would surge into the UEFA Cup on the final day in Frankfurt, win the DFB Cup in ringed socks in 1989, and appoint Ottmar Hitzfeld in 1991, turning the club into the second force in German football, would all have remained fantasy.
In that moment the second division stood before us like a huge wall, with clubs such as Viktoria Aschaffenburg, Union Solingen or the village side FSV Salmrohr waiting there.