Dortmund have one last final in Champions League race, says Kovac

Borussia Dortmund’s Bundesliga finale against relegated Holstein Kiel must be approached like a final if they are to claim a Champions League place for next season.

That is the view of head coach Niko Kovac, who is hoping to cap a remarkable turnaround for the 2023-24 Champions League runners-up with a top-four finish.

Winners of six of their last seven league matches, including last week’s 4-2 victory at Bayer Leverkusen, Dortmund have climbed from 11th in the table to fifth and are on 54 points.

They enter the final game of the season one point behind Freiburg in fourth and three behind Eintracht Frankfurt in third.

But with those two teams facing off at the Europa-Park Stadion, Dortmund will be guaranteed a top-four finish if they beat 17th-placed Kiel by at least three goals.

“It’s a good feeling to be back in the mix but it is about taking that last step that can sometimes also be the toughest,” Kovac, who took over in February, said on Thursday.

“Finals are the games that we all want to be part of. In the last weeks we had many finals. We had to win those games.

“We won them and now we are in a position that we have things in our own hands. Before we depended on others.”

Ahead of the final matchday, the Opta supercomputer gives Dortmund an 83.1% chance of finishing fourth and a 16.6% likelihood of staying in fifth.

The top four teams in the Bundesliga will qualify directly for the lucrative Champions League group phase next season.

Failure to qualify would represent a major financial blow for the Ruhr valley club, and Kovac says they will simply focus on their own match and shut out noise from elsewhere.

“I won’t be looking at my cell phone,” Kovac said. “We have an important game, we know that. So we won’t change.

“I am a friend of keeping things as they are so everyone can build their own tension to deliver the performance we need on Saturday.

“We want and must win the game to reach what we all dream of. But it will be extremely difficult.”