Emergency Fear the Wall Roundtable: Marco Rose Out, Edin Terzic In

Seemingly out of the blue, Marco Rose is out as the manager of Borussia Dortmund. In what appears to be the result of a contentious meeting between Rose and BVB’s board, chiefly composed of officials Hans-Joachim Watzke (CEO), Sebastian Kehl (Sporting Director), and Matthias Sammer (External Consultant), a decision was made between the two parties to part ways. It is not immediately apparent what caused the rift; it will likely be revealed in due time.

Rose’s rumored replacement is Edin Terzic, the caretaker manager that led BVB to a DFB Pokal win and Champions League qualification after a disastrous start under Lucien Favre last season.

In light of this situation, the FTW crew have assembled to give our individual thoughts on this subject.

Sean: I’ve let the news settle in for a few hours now, and I’m still completely baffled. The entire direction of the club over the last few weeks has seemed to be to build Marco Rose a squad that will allow him to use his coaching abilities to the maximum. The idea was that if the squad went on to fail this season, then we’d be able to blame Rose because he proved he couldn’t lead a talented squad. But the way he got us to second place in the Bundesliga with such an untalented an injury-riddled squad make me think he 100% deserved another chance next year.

I don’t know what happened in the meeting between Sammer, Watkze, Kehl, and Rose. My guess, based on various snippets reported in different outlets, is that Marco Rose got overly defensive of his own performance and the meeting got contentious. Watzke and Sammer, who were already unfavorable towards Rose, saw this as the last straw and sacked him, outvoting Kehl, who by all accounts has had full faith in Rose all season.

I like Terzic as a person, but bringing him on at such an important moment in the club’s history is such a huge risk. He hasn’t proven himself beyond a solid half of a season with Dortmund. Although he’s a great motivator who surely knows how to get the best out of his players, I have my doubts about him as a tactician. With the investment we’re putting into the squad this season, and the possibility that Bayern Munich will step back after losing Lewandowski, this feels like the worst possible time to shake things up on the touchline. I really hope Terzic proves me wrong.

Zac: A year in football takes on many meanings, and for Marco Rose today, his past year looks very, very short. Rose inherited a disorganized squad at BVB, and paired with a historic injury crisis, had to do his best to keep the wheels pointing in the right direction for the full season. It is this writer’s opinion that Rose deserved another shot at the helm of BVB because of the wildly inconsistent variables affecting his initial run-out. If there are too many erroneous variables affecting a test, you throw out the data, not the equipment, and start again.

That said, Marco Rose also had his chances to deliver and showed that even with the best squad available, he could not get it done. The highs of thrashing Wolfsburg were met with the lows of falling out of the Pokal to St. Pauli with a fully fit squad. I think Peter Stoger could have coached the players on the field that day past St. Pauli, so you have to wonder.

Terzic has five months of experience at the helm of a top level football team, and we have seen that he can inspire passion in his players. But Marco Rose is a tactician, and I am not convinced that Terzic can guide the team past difficult opponents when it becomes more than just locker room pep talks. Sometimes small, detailed changes affect the way the team works through the opposition, and Terzic may not have the experience to find three points in those situations. I also fear that the players brought in already who are so eager to wear Black and Yellow may now be wondering how stable the new project truly is. In any case, we are clearly starting from scratch.

Nick: Like everyone else, I was fairly baffled by the news of Rose’s sacking, but having had some time to process the decision, it probably shouldn’t have been as shocking as it felt. Rose had an extremely unfortunate time at Borussia Dortmund with nearly half of his first-team squad being out for large portions of his first (and now only) season in charge of the club. Having said that, there were very few moments this season that suggested the club was on a positive path in terms of on-the-pitch performance. The real issue I have with the decision though is that it was reportedly made after just a two-hour meeting, which resulted in a fight between the coach and upper management. If these reports are true, that is an incredibly rash and childish decision that is unacceptable for a club the size of Borussia Dortmund to make.

On top of that, the appointment of Edin Terzic is one that is unfair for a manager that will be entering his first full season. I’ll be happy to see Terzic back on the touchline, but he’s far too inexperienced as a manager and tactician to be given the lofty expectations that BVB now have for next season. He has, however, shown himself to be a capable man-manager that can unlock talent when given the opportunity. Hopefully, he’ll be able to recapture some of the magic he brought to the club 2 seasons ago.

Paul: I have probably been one of the more vociferous Rose supporters over the course of the season. I don't think this campaign has been a success in any way, but I think he inherited a bad squad which suffered a genuine injury crisis (not the kind that fans think is happening every year). Given all this, I thought he did at least enough to earn another crack at it, with a new squad that is better and healthier than the last. I think the club should have kept him on a tight leash going into the new season, but the least he deserved was a chance to prove himself with this new look BVB (that looks an awful lot like a team built for him...).

Not only does this seem a little unfair on Rose, it also paints the club in a bad light. If they had made the call to move on from Rose in a measured fashion, I think we'd all have understood (even if some of us disagreed), but that's a far cry from what just happened. They canned the manager out of the blue, seemingly without a sensible plan for his succession.

It's a shame that the bubble of excitement from the recent transfer deals has been burst by this, but hopefully Terzic is up to the task.

Sarah: You didn’t need to be fluent in German to grasp the message of BVB’s Friday morning tweet. I stared at the Twitter app, completely flummoxed. That is the state I’ve been in since learning that Rose was given the boot (and not the kind of the glass variety filled with beer). Still, several hours later, that hasn’t changed. What I find so compelling is that we all know the kind of season BVB had, it was rife with abysmal moments we’d all like to purge from our memories sprinkled with peaks eking through like the sun in the Faroe Islands, yet there was never much discussion on Rose getting axed as part of the solution. No! In fact, I have more recollections of BVB brass standing behind Rose despite the team bombing out of the Champions League and embarrassing loss after embarrassing loss at home.

I did the math and since the 2014 - 2015 season, there’s been 7 different men at the helm. For a team that professes to be part of the upper echelon of the Bundesliga, that is indicative of a larger problem and one that warrants as much attention as filling the void left by Erling Haaland.

Like my fellow FTW peers, I am an Edin Terzic stan. His story seems pulled straight from a fairytale, his blood runs black and yellow and the team clearly respects him. Is that enough to translate into success? I’m passionate about Thai food, but that doesn’t mean I’m qualified to be head chef of my own Thai restaurant. I certainly wish nothing but success for him and until the we see results, I’m Switzerland.

What do you think of the move? Let us know your thoughts below.