Tuesday night was one of those nights. A sell-out crowd of 75,000 at the Allianz Arena in Munich, and a TV audience of nearly 13 million in Germany alone.
Borussia Dortmund’s biggest shot at saving a season nearly turned out to be disastrous. Yet a certain Queenslander named Mitchell Langerak came up with a brilliant display on the pitch which helped his club get out of jail via penalties to progress to the German Cup final.
Langerak surely added to the already sizeable following he’s garnered in Germany’s football mad west. But where does he go from here?
Langerak’s performance in the German Cup semi-final against the almighty Bayern Munich was something to behold. Two very vital interventions in extra time against Bastian Schweinsteiger from close range, another fearless borderline clearance against the former Dortmund striker Robert Lewandowski, as well as a saved penalty, helped Dortmund to reach the final.
Suprisingly enough, Dortmund has won all three encounters against their Munich rivals with Langerak as their goalkeeper. However, Langerak’s first memorable display in the 2012 Cup final win against the very same opponent already led some to believe that the time had come for the young Australian to take over the reigns in Dortmund’s goal. That ultimately did not materialise though.
This time around, the cards might just be stacked in the young Australian’s favour. His rival for the Dortmund number one spot, Roman Weidenfeller, will turn 35 this summer, which certainly can be described as the latter stages of a goalkeeper’s career. And Weidenfeller has been mixing flawless displays with a couple of error-prone games this season.
Some of Weidenfeller’s frailties had already cost him his role as the undisputed number one just before Christmas. Langerak was handed three starts in a row, however the fact that he went to compete in the AFC Asian Cup just after Christmas meant that Weidenfeller was reinstated as the Dortmund number one.
It has been five years since Dortmund raised a lot of eyebrows around Germany by recruiting a player, let alone a goalkeeper, from Australia. The consensus among sports journalists in Germany is that the signing has paid off. However at some point, Langerak is going to require a definitive break through.
Germany’s academy system is producing young goalkeeping talent at a breathtaking pace, so much so that even FC Barcelona didn’t hesitate to buy an uncapped keeper from the Bundesliga. Dortmund will most certainly give Mitchell Langerak a decent shot at replacing Roman Weidenfeller as their first choice goalkeeper. However, the club might also opt to acquire a promising German youngster to compete with him. Cologne’s Timo Horn, for example, would be an obvious candidate.
Jürgen Klopp’s departure as Dortmund manager adds a considerable amount of uncertainty to proceedings. Whereas Klopp’s successor Thomas Tuchel has shown a healthy amount of disrespect for his players’ past merits, that could work in Langerak’s favour. Tuchel most certainly was among those 13 million Germans following the action in Munich. And while Langerak’s saves won’t be a guarantee for a future starting berth, they will surely have worked in his favour.
Finally, to shed some light on Langerak’s perspective, the question remains: is the Dortmund goal all that desirable, and is it worth the five-year effort he has already put in? Well, from a financial point of view, a Premier League pay check most certainly beats what is on offer in Germany.
But as BVB chief executive Hans-Joachim Watzke quite fittingly put it, Dortmund does not pay as well as Bayern, yet Dortmund isn’t just throwing peanuts at its players either. Moreover the unrivalled enthusiasm of the 80,667 that fill the famous Westfalenstadion week in week out might make up for some of the lost financial incentives. At least in the eyes of a football romantic.
Also, it would be a crying shame if all that German vocabulary Langerak has amassed while residing in the football crazy city of Dortmund were to be for nothing.
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