Dynamo Dresden lifted the 2. Bundesliga title for the second time in five years after Trebor Mahtal built a trademark exciting young squad in his second season in East Germany. The 90-year-old manager now had to strengthen key areas of the squad to try and battle Germany’s best.
The summer began with heavy interest in Dresden’s youngsters. Mahtal agreed to let attacker Spiro Baturina join Liverpool for a new club record sale of £15m then handed new deals to star players like Mathías Miranda, Moussa Koné, Espen Ronning and David Boril.
The Baturina move was sanctioned as Mahtal had already found a much better replacement in wonderkid Jiri Tafat for £5.5m from Plzen. Joining him was fellow wonderkid midfielder Lucas Ríos for what should become a club record £10m from Newell’s Old Boys and three more midfielders in Diego Reyes for £1.5m from Tijuana, Hamlet Manukyan for £3m from Slavia Prague and Lautaro Jiménez for just £40k from Talleres. Mahtal also strengthened his defensive options with José Romário, who’s 6ft 5in with 17 jumping reach and 16 acceleration, for £3.7m from Santos and pacey Daily Enamorado, who’ll retrain as a left back, for £1.2m from Junior before adding backup striker Cristian Zaracho for £925k from Libertad.
The squad now contains 16 players with up to 5-star potential and four wonderkids, so Mahtal was excited about their prospects. He initially stuck with the narrow 4-3-3 but toyed between using that and the 3-4-3 he used at Hannover, with Tafat retraining to play as the shadow striker in behind Ronning, Moussa Koné dropping deeper, and Romário and Ríos forming a solid partnership with Mexico international Juan Navarro, who was named in the 2074 World Cup Dream Team.
Dresden Step Up To Bundesliga
The bookies backed Dresden to avoid relegation, predicting a 15th-place finish with title odds of 500/1. Holders Gladbach are 8/5 favourites along with Mahtal’s former side Dortmund (3/1), Leverkusen (9/1), Bayern (10/1), who haven’t won Bundesliga for six years and only once in 10 years, Hertha BSC (13/1) and Mahtal’s other former clubs Hannover and Frankfurt (20/1 and 25/1). Dynamo, unsurprisingly, have the lowest wage spend in the division at £525k per week, nearly nine times less than big-spending Dortmund’s £4.6m, Gladbach’s £4m and Bayern’s £3.4m.
Dresden returned to Bundesliga with a tricky trip to Hertha and lost 2-1 before hosting Bayern and falling to a slightly unlucky 2-0 defeat. Mahtal switched to the 3-4-3 for a trip to fellow promoted side and an improved defensive effort and 9 saves by Jiri Machacek ensured a first clean sheet while Koné and Ríos nicked a fortunate 2-0 win. That was backed up by Ronning’s first two goals of the season earning a 3-2 win over Koln and, after a 3-1 loss at Schalke, Zaracho bagged his first two goals in a 3-1 win over St. Pauli and Koné followed suit for the same scoreline at home to Nurnberg.
Dresden unsurprisingly struggled against Germany’s big boys but did earn an impressive 0-0 in Mahtal’s first clash with his former employee Hannover, whose team has become really strong. That seemingly gave them some confidence as Romário and Tafat both scored their first goals in a dominant 3-1 win at Augsburg before Koné, Rojas and another Tafat strike edged a 3-2 win over Werder Bremen before Miranda, who had a series of injuries at the start of the campaign, scored twice and created the other for Tafat to earn a 3-2 win at Frankfurt.
But a tricky December, with consecutive defeats to Wolfsburg, Leipzig, Leverkusen and Dortmund, left Dresden in a very respectable 8th place, 8 points clear of any relegation concerns.
From Avoiding Relegation To Outside European Hope
Any outside hopes of achieving the DFB-Pokal success Mahtal managed in his first Hannover Bundesliga campaign were ended by getting battered at Dortmund in the second round. So all eyes were on league matters. 2075 began by entertaining holders Gladbach, and a month off seemed to have done them good as Tafat scored the only goal. However, they got thumped 3-0 at leaders Bayern then lost 1-0 at home to high-flying fellow newboys Freiburg, who were somehow only 5 points behind the leaders!
Mahtal made a few tweaks to the tactic, including playing shorter passes, working the ball into the box and instructing balls to be distributed to the centre backs. That had an immediate impact as Ronning snapped a 15-hour goal drought to cap a 2-0 win at Koln and Romário’s header nicked a 1-0 at St. Pauli in late February to open up a 14-point gap to the bottom three. The improving Koné, who’d successfully retrained to play deeper, scored twice in an excellent 4-2 win at Nurnberg to take Dresden and, whisper it quietly, in with an outside chance of qualifying for Europe.
They slipped to an unlucky 3-2 defeat at Hannover but another Romário header to down Augsburg 1-0 saw them leapfrog Mahtal’s former club into 7th with seven games remaining. Ronning annoyingly tore his calf on his Norway debut against New Zealand and missed the rest of the season, and without him they struggled to a 1-0 defeat at Werder. But they found form as a rare Miranda goal nicked a 1-0 win at home to Frankfurt and Ríos and Koné edged a 2-1 win at struggling Wolfsburg to move Dresden 6th with four games remaining. However, the final four games were really tough.
Boril earned a 1-1 at home to Leipzig, before Rojas’ late strike earned an exciting 3-3 at Leverkusen. That left 4th-place Frankfurt and 8th-place Gladbach separated by just 4 points with two games to go.
Dresden continued to impress as Machacek’s four saves earned a 0-0 at home to leaders Dortmund in the penultimate game of the season. And a big final day clash saw 7th-place Dresden visit 6th-place usurped champions Gladbach, and their uptorn in form continued as another solid defensive showing was backed up by Miranda chipping in a delicious 71st-minute winner.
That win saw them climb above the holders to finish in an impressive 6th place in Bundesliga, which confirmed qualification for the Europa League and £65m in prize money. They finished on 54 points after 16 wins, 6 draws and 12 defeats, with entertainment very much at a premium as they scored 45 and conceded 43.
Impressive Overperformance
Despite a great first season in Bundesliga, goals still proved pretty difficult to come by. Koné was the only player to reach double figures with 10 in 25 from holding midfield, followed by Ronning (8 in 25) and Tafat and Miranda (4). Left wingback Fabian Felbinger led the way with 8 assists, followed by Ríos, Tafat and Ibishi (6).
The potential at the club was highlighted by star man Koné becoming Dresden’s first-ever winner of European Golden Boy, while Tafat came 3rd in NxGn with Zaracho 40th and Manukyan 49th.
Mahtal was pretty taken aback by Dresden’s success this season. But could he add crucial players to take them to the next level and challenge Germany’s big boys? Join us on Friday to find out!
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