BVB in the Champions League? On the return of Dortmund's lightness

As the ball was in the net, Karim Adeyemi stepped up. The Borussia Dortmund attacker had secured the 4-0 final score in the home match against VfL Wolfsburg with his second goal of the evening in the 73rd minute. The Dortmund stadium shook, and Adeyemi was so electrified that he swung his left foot and forcefully kicked the corner flag out of its anchor. Without a corner flag, however, there was no game, so Adeyemi had to resort to manual labor to return it to its original, upright position. Only then could referee Felix Brych allow the game to resume.

Anyone who wanted to could attribute symbolic value to the scene, because Adeyemi wasn't the only one who had to repair damage of his own making. His club, too, is currently in the process of repairing what he had previously broken. Dortmund had a disastrous season for much of it, at times closer to the relegation zone than to the Champions League places, but they had returned to form just in time for the season's finale. The decisive victory against a lackluster Wolfsburg was their sixth consecutive match without defeat – the first time Dortmund have achieved such a streak this season.

Karim Adeyemi vs. Dortmund corner flag: celebrations after the goal to make it 4-0.

Source: IMAGO/DeFodi Images

As a reward for this late resurgence, Champions League qualification, which had at one point seemed almost hopeless, is once again a realistic prospect. The 4-0 victory in front of their own fans lifted BVB back into the zone of the table that qualifies them for the Champions League for the first time since the third matchday, at least temporarily. Until SC Freiburg's match against Bayer Leverkusen on Sunday (5:30 p.m., DAZN), Dortmund are in fourth place.

The atmosphere in the stadium was correspondingly exuberant after the final whistle. The BVB players gathered in front of the south stand, jumping up and down in sync with the fans, and the players' children even scurried through the frame. A lightness of spirit has returned to the club at the end of the season that would have been considered impossible just a few weeks ago. "That's the beauty of football: things can change relatively quickly," said coach Niko Kovac on the Sky microphone.

He is the man responsible for the Black and Yellows' turnaround. When he took office in February, succeeding the overwhelmed Nuri Sahin, his mission was to stabilize BVB and eradicate its extreme performance fluctuations. He seems to have succeeded – after some initial effort. Dortmund aren't playing magical football, but they are solid and can rely on their strength in attack.

It was the same against Wolfsburg. After striker Serhou Guirassy's 1-0 goal in the third minute, the game was evenly matched for much of the match, with VfL closer to a 1-1 draw than Dortmund were to a second goal. However, with his 2-0 goal after the hour mark, Guirassy broke Wolfsburg's resistance – and opened the door to an exhilarating final phase for Dortmund, in which Karim Adeyemi sealed the victory with two goals.

Coach Kovac rightly warned afterward that the victory was a bit too high. But after Dortmund had repeatedly found new ways to drop points throughout the season, it's good news that they're currently reliably taking every point. In addition to their familiar attacking power, BVB also demonstrated a new quality against Wolfsburg: For the first time since March 1 (2-0 win at St. Pauli), the team kept a clean sheet.

The stadium was already singing European Cup songs during the match, but Champions League qualification is far from assured. "The team is at a really good level, but we have to keep going," said Kovac, looking ahead to the final two games of the season at Bayer Leverkusen and at home against Holstein Kiel. Only afterward will it become clear whether BVB has managed to save the season just as Karim Adeyemi managed to repair the corner flag.