The Borussia Dortmund ‘utopia’: Stars now beg for a move to become the next

Another year of the football calendar is coming to a close, and those with a keen European interest will have noticed more names creeping onto their talent radar.

Giovanni Reyna, Youssoufa Moukoko and Dan-Axel Zagadou, Mateu Morey. The list goes on. 

Like Jadon Sancho and Christian Pulisic in recent years gone by, each of these talented youths have a connection binding them firmly together.

That connection is one of deep black and electric yellow; the finishing school that is Borussia Dortmund.

No team in Europe has been able to create a model as efficient as Borussia Dortmund with low purchases and sky-high selling; Sportsmail takes a deeper look inside the yellow machine 

Season upon season Dortmund give a fresh run to what is one of, if not the, boldest football model in top flight European competition.

Faces come and go, average ages seemingly get lower and yet Dortmund continue to intrigue, dazzle and dare to dream in equal measure.

It’s a system not without its faults, but one which a host of envious top flight clubs across the continent have tried and failed to replicate.

For now, Dortmund find themselves sitting on a goldmine. An inflated transfer market in recent years, following Neymar’s astronomical move from Barcelona to PSG, has served to help clubs like the Bundesliga side raise their pricing.

Dortmund indeed found themselves at the epicentre of the sweeping change, as a panic-stricken Barca eventually came knocking the door down with a £135.3m offer for Ousmane Dembele.

That was in the summer of 2017. Now, over three years later, the yellow machine still operates at a ferocious pace. A silk pouch of dazzling jewels, the Dortmund squad we see today has much to envy yet also much to question.

Europe’s goldmine

As of May 2019, financial experts Forbes had Borussia Dortmund’s squad valuation placed around the £670million mark.

This was before the continued meteoric rise of Jadon Sancho, and only in the very recent aftermath of the acquisition of Erling Braut Haaland.

Revised estimates in 2020 from competitor monetary experts place Dortmund’s value closer to the £800m mark, and rising.

Indeed, the humble city in North Rhine-Westphalia has rapidly emerged as an incubator of the continent’s best football talent, and a cash-generating behemoth at the same time.

In Jadon Sancho (left) and Erling Haaland (right) Dortmund have over £200m worth of talent

According to football market analysts Transfermarkt, Dortmund currently boast two stars in Sancho and Haaland who have a ‘base value’ of £90m, which in the reality of their long-term contracts would command way in access of the £100m mark for a transfer.

In Reyna and Moukoko they have two players with projected ‘ceiling’ values in a similar region, forecast between £75m and £160m.

Of the aforementioned stars two – Reyna and Moukoko – are still teenagers, while Sancho and Haaland turned 20 only this year. This month Moukoko became the youngest goalscorer in Bundesliga history at…