Borussia Dortmund coach Niko Kovac interview: 'Our motto is KISS — keep it simple, stupid'
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Sebastian Stafford-Bloor
Niko Kovac rescued Borussia Dortmund last season and has them in second so far this campaign
It was a good 2025 for Niko Kovac. In February, following the dismissal of Nuri Sahin, he was appointed to rescue a Borussia Dortmund season that had lost its way.
Dortmund had 14 Bundesliga games left. They were 11th. By the end of the season, they were fourth and qualified for the Champions League. Lars Ricken, the club’s managing director for sport, acclaimed it as “one of the great managerial performances in Dortmund’s history”.
Kovac had overcome his first challenge and was given a new two-year contract as a reward.
That was in August 2025 and marked the moment when his second act at the club began. The challenge since has been to push Dortmund forward. That has been largely successful, too.
Kovac and his players reached the winter break in second. They have an outstanding defensive record, having conceded just 12 goals in 15 Bundesliga games, and are well-placed to advance to the Champions League knockout stages. The Bundesliga returns on Friday, with Dortmund travelling to face Eintracht Frankfurt.
But last month, the morning after a 2-0 win over Borussia Monchengladbach, before heading back to his family home in Salzburg for Christmas, Kovac reflected on the past 10 months.
“The sporting situation at the club was clear when we arrived,” he told The Athletic. “We were 11th, and we needed to change something. So, the first thing was to work on the team’s physical abilities.
“As a footballer, you’re at your best when you’re not tired. Your decisions are better, so is your coordination. So, that was our plan with the athletic team. If we could combine quality players with physical ability, we would become very difficult to beat.
“Then we needed to create some defensive stability. We moved to a back four (from a back three), and that wasn’t so successful, so we switched to a back five because we didn’t have the stability we needed.
“The priority was a good defensive base; that was the main thing.”
Initially, there was no dividend. Dortmund lost four of Kovac’s first six league games in charge. Having been appointed mid-season and with the team in the thick of a two-game-a-week schedule, time on the training pitches was scarce. The key, Kovac says, was not overloading the players. Dortmund had become a brittle team, fragile away from home, and toughening their resolve was a process: “We wanted to change the mindset. Like any new coach, I had my own ideas and my own vision, but that’s something that takes time.
“We didn’t play the first six games well. The (1-0) defeat to Augsburg (in March) was probably the low point and we, the coaches and players, had a very honest meeting after that, when we talked about what we need to do to achieve our goals.
“But we’d seen that the team had a lot of quality. We knew that we had to make adjustments, but also that we needed to keep it simple. And that became our motto: KISS — keep it simple, stupid.
“That helped. If you try to change everything and turn 180 degrees in the opposite direction, it’s impossible. There would be too many instructions coming from the coaches to the players.
“They have the pressure to perform and achieve their goals already, and then — at the same time — the coaches are trying to change everything. It’s too much. You can do more harm than good.
“So, we worked on small things. The players had the quality to adapt to those changes very quickly.”
Dortmund remained unbeaten through the final eight games of the season, winning seven. It also included a stirring 3-1 win against Barcelona in the Champions League quarter-finals, on a night when the Westfalenstadion came to life, and the team came close to overcoming a 4-0 first-leg deficit. They fell short, but, according to Kovac, it generated momentum for the rest of the season.
Dortmund beat Barcelona but fell short of overturning a first-leg deficit (Alex Grimm/Getty Images)
“You know what the area and the supporters here are like. If you work hard here in Dortmund, anything is possible. That game gave us such belief. Not just us, the players and the staff members, but the club as a whole.”
But it has not been smooth progress ever since.
By the end of the Gladbach game, Dortmund looked leggy and fatigued, and it was a reminder of just how long a year this has been. They were one of two German clubs, alongside Bayern, to take part in the Club World Cup in the U.S.
They reached the quarter-final, when they were eliminated by Real Madrid, and the club reported a positive experience, but at the cost of a much shorter pre-season and far less rest for the players. For a team built on physicality, that was less than ideal and the players looked shattered by the time the league shut down for Christmas.
Ideologically, it has also been an exacting period. Dortmund is a complicated club, where expectations are high and where — even now, 11 years after he left — Jurgen Klopp’s style of football is what many supporters want to see.
When Kovac was appointed, one of the concerns was whether his philosophy, with its greater emphasis on defensive discipline and counter-attacking, would be an ideological mismatch. While Dortmund’s performances and league placing have helped to quieten that conversation, it has never quite gone away.
Despite 104 goals scored in 49 matches in charge, an average of more than two per game, Kovac continues to duel with that issue: “First of all, what is Dortmund?
“I played here many times before I was a coach. It’s a working-class club with passion, desire, attitude and hard work in its DNA. They also want to see nice football here. I remember when Jurgen Klopp was here with his heavy metal football.
“But these are different times, with different players, and it’s a different situation. We must look forward rather than back.
“At the same time, we know there are ways we could improve in all parts of the game. In possession, out of possession, the transition game. Set pieces are also a big topic for us. We can always be better.
“But at this stage, those improvements won’t be in 20 or 30 per cent increments. We are talking about small pieces, little changes.
“We have talked to the players about what we need to be successful, we’ve built a framework with lots of repetition in training and with our automatisms on the pitch, and now it’s important to bring the players’ personality into that structure. Next, we want to implement character.
“We can improve in certain areas, that’s true, but I’m not so negative.”
Another hot topic has been the integration of Jobe Bellingham, who moved to Dortmund from Sunderland for €30m over the summer.
At times, Bellingham has been treated harshly by the German media. The younger brother of Jude, who played with distinction for Dortmund between 2021 and 2023, before leaving for Real Madrid, Jobe had never played higher than the English Championship before he moved to the Bundesliga.
Barring the Gladbach game, for which he was suspended, Bellingham has featured in every match Dortmund have played this season (across the Bundesliga, Champions League and DFB-Pokal), but has accumulated fewer than 900 minutes in total.
But this, Kovac says, is a gentle introduction by design. Dortmund’s midfield has been packed with internationals (Felix Nmecha, Marcel Sabitzer, Pascal Gross, Julian Brandt) and Bellingham is adapting to a much more competitive league.
Kovac praised Bellingham and explained why he did not start every game (Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images)
“When a player moves from the Championship to the Bundesliga, I think that’s a very big step. Yes, the Championship is a very physical league, but from a football perspective, the quality in the Bundesliga is a lot higher. That’s clear. And at Dortmund, the competition inside the team is very high.
“My experience is that when a young player joins a new club — and this does vary — is that it can take three to six months to adapt. It takes time, but sometimes people are not fair and expect an immediate, big development.
“He’s also coming from abroad, where the language and culture were different, and his brother was here, too, so there’s that extra pressure around him.”
Kovac is complimentary, though. Bellingham may need time, but his foundations as a professional are extremely impressive.
“As a human being, he’s wonderful. He’s an educated, humble guy, who wants to work hard and to improve every single day, either by watching footage or on training pitch. It’s absolutely what a coach wants. Sometimes I have to stop him and remind him that we play two games a week.
“But I really like it. Not only because of how it helps him, but also because it pushes other players. Sometimes, I say to him that he shouldn’t eat, drink and sleep football, because you need different things in your life to keep your mind free, but everything has been very positive.
“He’s played in 23 games so far, and this is good for his development, I think. He’s making steps forward all the time, and he will absolutely have a good career. I’m very happy with him. He’s a top guy, and a very good player.”
Bellingham’s development is one of many curiosities surrounding the second half of Dortmund’s season.
Hans-Joachim Watzke, who had been the club’s CEO since 2005, recently stepped aside and has been replaced by Carsten Cramer. There is uncertainty regarding the futures of Nico Schlotterbeck, the elegant centre-back, and Karim Adeyemi, the dynamic forward, who are both entering the final 18 months of their respective contracts.
During the Gladbach game, Adeyemi suffered a difficult evening, full of frustration. He reacted badly to being substituted in the second half, and Sebastian Kehl, the club’s technical director, had to prevent him from storming down the tunnel. In a 2-1 win against Bayer Leverkusen in November, Serhou Guirassy also responded negatively to being brought off, and that drew a few days’ headlines, too.
“This is a very big team,” Kovac says when asked about having to cope with that noise. “After Bayern Munich, we attract the most media attention in Germany, and after each game, that only increases. But I try to ignore it. I don’t read the papers, because they take my focus away from the team — and I can never afford that.
“Perhaps we give the journalists and the media too much food at times, and that can be a little bit annoying. But we’re trying to manage that and get better at it. That takes time, too. The club is what matters most. We need to be together.
“You have to build the foundation before you have the big house.”
