Kai• ros | Julian Brandt

20.

Julian's point of view

Wembley, London, June, 2024

Life at Wembley stopped for a hundredth of a second. It's as if the whole of London plunged into silence for a moment and gave you space to think.

You dream about something all your life. All your life you are heading somewhere and you are following your dream. And suddenly, when you are standing right in front of the gates and there is only one step left in front of you, the last and many times the most difficult step, your dream begins to slowly recede. It is surrounded by a thick, milky mist, in which it gradually dissolves. And you just stand motionless right in front of the target plane and you are not able to fully understand what just happened. A minute, two, three will pass and after the initial trance that intoxicated you, a depressing reality will come. A wave of emotions, mostly negative ones, will flood your body.

Anxiety, slowly blending into sadness. Sadness, slowly resulting in frustration. Until finally, only disappointment remains, spreading throughout your inner being.

Disappointment, a sign that you decided to dream. All of us, the whole of Borussia Dortmund, through the club's management, the employees of the individual departments, us players to our loyal fans, who many times represented the famous twelfth player on the field, dared to dream. We dreamed a small-big football dream. A beautiful dream. Perhaps one of the most beautiful in football career. The dream of winning the Champions League. A dream about how in Wembley we will be the ones who, accompanied by confetti falling over our heads, lift the cup in triumph.

Disappointment, such a beautiful sadness. A fitting end to a tragic story called Expectations.

We promised ourselves that this season would be different. Special and exceptional. A season with a happy ending, which we longed for so much after last year's.

Life, however, writes its own bittersweet scenarios. Thorny scenarios that are miles away from your ideas and expectations.

It was all too familiar. Too similar to what I was experiencing a few months ago.

On one side, there was the enthusiastic roar and joy of my opponents, on the opposite side, only gloom and indescribable sorrow shining in the eyes of my teammates.

Borussia Dortmund was once again the bad Borussia. That bitter, cold, without a hint of compassion and pity. The one who hurt the most those who always love her the most.

Borussia Dortmund failed once again. As a year ago on home soil, so now on the world stage, in front of millions. First there was the Meisterschale, which we had within reach and which we allowed to slip through our fingers, to be replaced a year and a bit later by the ear-shaped cup of the Champions League.

There was a painful loss in the air around me. Like fine dust, it flew through the air and landed on our shoulders, where it turned into a burden. We could barely stay on our feet under it weight. Some of us were kneeling, with our heads hanging and our palms tightly clenched into fists. Others covered their faces with their hands and lay motionless on the lawn. And then there were people like me who just stared blankly into the unknown.

I felt a firm grip on my shoulder. A small gesture of support and solidarity given to each one of us by the coach. He walked from one to the other, trying to pick up and glue together all the pieces that his team had shattered into. And even if you don't want to, you have to. Use your last strength to face the story that fate has written for you. Because despite the disappointment you're experiencing, the loss you're facing, you can't just get stuck and stay on one and the same page of the book. It is necessary to move on in the story. The moments that followed after that are a blur. They consist only of flashes of moments and fragments of words that were strong enough to be etched in my memory.