The 41-year-old is BVB through and through, though he has endured his struggles over the past few seasons
It's May 27, 2023, and Edin Terzic is stood facing a steep wall of yellow humanity. The Borussia Dortmund manager's face says everything; he looks like his soul's been ripped out, and when the supporters behind the goal break into another round of chanting, he cannot help but break down in tears.
"If you win and stand top, or if you lose and stand at the bottom, we’ll still sing: Borussia, BVB!," they cry.
This scene played out on the final day of the 2022-23 Bundesliga season. Having kept pace with Bayern Munich all campaign, the Bavarians' shock defeat to RB Leipzig meant only mid-table Mainz stood in the way of Dortmund and their first league title in over a decade. But it all went very wrong.
Within 24 minutes they were 2-0 down, and although second-half strikes from Raphael Guerreiro and Niklas Sule would ultimately earn them a draw, Bayern would end up clinching the Bundesliga trophy on goal difference.
"You see how tough and hard the sport is that we chose to love. It is hard when you see only one goal is missing. There was no happy end for us and hurts a lot," Terzic said at full-time.
A little over 12 months later, Dortmund have a chance to bury these demons. Against all the odds, Terzic has guided his side to a Champions League final this season, with BVB set to do battle with kings of the competition, Real Madrid, at Wembley on Saturday.
It's the pinnacle of Terzic's managerial career to date, and when you consider the journey he's been on prior to this moment, it's difficult not to get a little misty eyed.
Getty ImagesDortmund through and through
Born a stone's throw away in the small town of Menden, Terzic has lived and breathed Dortmund since he was a child. In a recent interview with UEFA, he fondly recalled the 1997 Champions League final, where BVB defeated a Juventus side containing Christian Vieri, Alessandro Del Piero and Zinedine Zidane – who was marked out of the game by Paul Lambert.
"I was 14 years old at the time. Unfortunately I wasn't in Munich [where the final was played], but I watched it on a big screen in my hometown. The next day I was at the airport for the homecoming when they landed with my brother. I've seen the match back several times since and it was a very special day for all Dortmund fans," he said
Terzic was also in the Wembley crowd for the 2013 final, where Dortmund were undone by Bayern Munich. "My trip in 2013 was as a fan. Mats Hummels, Marco Reus, Nuri Sahin, Sven Bender, they were on the team bus. I was on the fan bus," he told .
This affinity with the local area is something Terzic has always carried with him during his time in charge. "The city and the club are very closely connected with each other," he explained in that same interview with UEFA. "If you ask anyone what colours are associated with the city, you will always hear the answer yellow and black. It's a sort of reciprocity. The club represents the city, the city represents the club, and that's what makes both of them so special."
AdvertisementGetty ImagesRising through the ranks
Terzic had a decent playing career, featuring in a successful university team before developing into a prolific fourth-tier striker, but it soon became clear his talents lay in coaching. He got his first big break back in 2010, being recruited by friend Hannes Wolf as Dortmund's Under-19s assistant coach.
Terzic's progression was then turbocharged by his association with Slaven Bilic. The Dortmund coach revealed in an interview with that the then-Croatia boss reached out to him ahead of his side's Euro 2012 clash with Giovanni Trapattoni's steely Ireland team.
"I put down a few observations and ideas for playing," Terzic said. "Things like Luka Modric’s position. The Irish always closed down the No.10 space really effectively, so in order to get Modric on the ball as often possible, it was necessary for him to play deeper, almost like a quarterback."
These observations proved very useful, with Modric performing well in a 3-1 victory. Bilic's interest was piqued, with Terzic going on to spend time as his assistant during spells at Besiktas and West Ham. While in east London, Terzic left quite the impression on Hammers skipper Mark Noble.
"You could tell straight away he was obsessed [by football]," Noble told the last year. "After games we would sit and talk on the pitch for hours about formations, the way we played, how we can get better. You knew he would be successful because he loved the game so much.
"A lot of people who work or play in football don’t really enjoy the game because of the pressures. But you could tell he was one that loved everything that comes with it. He wanted to be really successful and help people."
Dream job
This experience of different footballing cultures played a significant role in Terzic's personal development. "This isn’t meant to sound arrogant, but after 13 years in dressing rooms, I’ve got the feeling that I know every player in the world — I just don’t know their names yet,” he has said.
This put him in a strong position when he returned to his beloved club in 2018 as Lucien Favre's assistant. And once the Frenchman was sacked partway through the 2020-21 campaign, Terzic was made interim boss until the end of the season, even leading his side to DFB-Pokal final victory over Leipzig.
That wasn't enough to earn him the role permanently, though he was handed a 'promotion' of sorts, being made technical director. But after an underwhelming 2021-22 campaign, Marco Rose departed, opening the door for Terzic to land the No.1 job on a permanent basis.
"By now, people should know how important BVB is in my life," Terzic said at the time. "We will give everything every day for the success of the club."
And he made good on his promise. Prior to that final-day heartache, Terzic earned praise for not only his side's performances on the pitch, but also for galvanizing the fanbase after 10 years firmly in Bayern Munich's shadow.
This was always one of his key aims too, as he revealed in another interview with in January 2023. "We want to make every game an experience," he said. "That’s what people identify with, that’s what it was like in 2010 to 2013 (under Klopp) when the ground was bursting with expectation each week and people couldn’t bear waiting for the next game," he said.
"When the crowd feel we are ready to invest everything to win a game, then they won’t be that cross if it doesn’t work out sometimes. There might one or two teams that are better than us, but there can’t be another team that put more into it than us."
Getty ImagesLucky to be here?
After that promising, though ultimately gut-wrenching, campaign, it always felt Terzic would struggle to go one better this season – particularly after the club sold star man Jude Bellingham to Real Madrid last summer. And so it has proved, with Dortmund almost immediately falling well behind the all-conquering Bayer Leverkusen in the title race.
Failing to keep pace with a team of this undeniable brilliance would be understandable, but Terzic's domestic issues extended well beyond that this campaign. In the end, Dortmund finished a distant fifth, below Leverkusen, Stuttgart, Bayern and Leipzig. They also crashed out of the DFB-Pokal early on, with Terzic going close to losing his job on a couple of occasions.
In January, a sort of compromise was reached, with former players Sahin and Bender brought in to shake up the coaching set up. The dressing room has not always been harmonious either. Hummels provided a reminder of that fact ahead of Saturday's final, speaking candidly about how he reacted to a pair of defeats to Stuttgart before Christmas.
"I was furious because I was of the opinion that Borussia Dortmund shouldn't play like that – against any opponent in the world," he said. "I didn't think it could go on like this. I felt insulted in my honour to stand on the pitch in that kit. So submissive, so inferior in footballing terms. The two Stuttgart games and the away game in Leverkusen. That was barricading with 11 men in the box."
Hummels went further too, revealing that he had strongly voiced his concerns to Terzic at the time, as well as questioning whether the coach was the person to get the most out of the players moving forward.
"It clearly got better after the winter break. That's also down to the co-trainers Nuri Sahin and Sven Bender who came in," he added. "You can still teach any footballer at any age, that's the point. We have good footballers with good skills. You can still get a lot out of our squad."