“I’m just happy to be back on the pitch, just to try and help the team – getting them back in the top three and obviously qualifying for the Champions League next year.” So said BVB’s returning No. 10 Jason Sancho recently, and how the England attacker’s presence in the squad has helped to revitalise his side’s pursuit of the top teams.
Playing with bundles of energy, menacing defences at every opportunity and providing an attacking spark that has sometimes been missing from the Black-and-Yellows on the domestic front this season, the Manchester United loanee looks back at home among old friends.
Providing an assist from the bench in Dortmund’s 3-0 win against Darmstadt on his first game since returning to the club, Sancho was thrust straight into the starting line-up in the 4-0 triumph at Cologne on Matchday 18 and was too hot to handle for the Billy-Goats, even being on the end of a foul that resulted in a Dortmund penalty, which Niclas Füllkrug dispatched with confidence. Another start in BVB’s subsequent win against Bochum means Sancho is gaining plenty of game rhythm at the German giants.
With the likes of Julian Brandt (he of the 14 Bundesliga goal involvements this season), Donyell Malen (scorer of his second Bundesliga brace against Cologne), Jamie Bynoe-Gittens, Bochum hat-trick hero Füllkrug and Youssoufa Moukoko all bringing something to the table prior to and since Sancho’s return, Dortmund’s attack has a more cohesive look with the addition of England’s EURO 2024 hopeful and the early signs after the 23-year-old’s return augur well for Die Schwarzgelben in terms of the possibility of soon rubbing shoulders with the leaders once more.
2. Dortmund have been here before
As recently as last season, in fact. After matchday 17 of the 2022/23 campaign, the Black-and-Yellows looked seriously out of sorts. Sitting in fifth place after six defeats and with just one point more (31) than they had at the same stage this time around, any talk of a shot at the Meisterschale seemed foolish.
And yet … going into the final round of games last May, Edin Terzić’s men famoulsy led the standings by two points from rivals Bayern Munich. The Bavarian giants would go on to pip Borussia at the death, of course, but that fact that BVB were there challenging at all will give them tremendous belief in the here and now. 
Dortmund won eight of their 10 Bundesliga games – and ten in ten in all competitions – out of the blocks in 2023 and they have begun this year with a 100 per cent start, now going three for three. With Bayer Leverkusen and Bayern going at it in a title-challenge for the ages, it’s a big ask for Terzić and Co. to propel the
