Lucien Favre reportedly met with Dortmund last week about becoming their next manager

Ever since Peter Stöger took over from Peter Bosz, we’ve heard rumblings about who Dortmund’s next permanent manager could be. Julian Nagelsmann’s name was tossed around, as was Niko Kovač’s, but now a favorite has finally emerged.

Lucien Favre is once again a finalist for the managerial position at BVB. According to Kicker, the club met with Favre last week as he is their first-choice for the soon-to-be open job.

Here’s a very poor translation of the Kicker article from our good friends at Google Translate:

BVB seems to have found its ideal candidate with Lucien Favre.

After the signs of a commitment of the Swiss in Dortmund have condensed in recent days, it is now said from several sides that BVB should have met in the last week even with the current coach of the OGC Nice.

Whether it was already in the conversation to details such as the squad planning, or at first only the fundamental question of whether the two camps can agree on a collaboration at all, is not known. On the other hand, it seems certain that Dortmund will part with Peter Stöger at the end of the season - and have found their ideal candidate in Favre.

It is also clear that for Favre a relatively moderate fee of three million euros would be due. According to “Bild” the ex-Gladbach coach was already after the surprising departure of Thomas Tuchel high in the BVB bosses in the course. At that time, however, Nice denied the tutor the clearance.

Favre is currently managing Nice, who sit in seventh place in the Ligue 1 table. He has been there since 2016, but was also heavily linked to Dortmund last summer when they replaced Thomas Tuchel with Peter Bosz. It’s clear that the higher-ups at BVB like him, so this would make a lot of sense.

Stöger has done fine since taking over as an interim manager, but he has also revealed some crucial weaknesses. His teams have looked better defensively but have often struggled to kill games off by following up a first goal with a second goal.

Favre is an accomplished manager, but he’s not a big name already known across Europe. His hiring would be a safer move for BVB. Zorc and Watzke are probably thinking back to how poorly things eventually went when they made the risky hire of Bosz last summer, and now are looking to be more cautious with their choice.

Who knows how that will really work out. Bayern are kind of doing the same thing with Niko Kovač, but they’re already in a much better position than anyone else in the Bundesliga.

It seems clear that Stöger won’t be staying on as a permanent boss, so Dortmund will likely hire a new manager relatively quickly after the season ends.