Almost as soon as their new manager, Lucien Favre, was taking charge of his first competitive match at Borussia Dortmund, supporters sensed they had boarded a roller-coaster. It was August, the first round of the German Cup, often an occasion where the bigger clubs, still rusty and raw, get surprised by teams from lower down the hierarchy.
Dortmund, who went through two different managers last season and only just scraped to fourth place in the final table, started anxiously at Greuther Furth, of the second division. They fell behind in the 77th minute. By the 90th the giants were facing humiliation against the minnows. Favre needed a remedy, and fast.
Injury-time reached its fifth minute, when the first of Favre's second-half substitutes, Axel Witsel, on his debut following his summer arrival, rescued the tie with a goal. Now to extra time. The stalemate endured. And just as the contest passed its 120th minute, up popped another substitute, Jadon Sancho, to cross for Marco Reus to score the winner. Dortmund had scraped through to Round 2, where they will meet Union Berlin, also of the second tier, on Wednesday.
In between these two knockout matches, super-subs have become Dortmund's superstars and Favre’s fledglings - they are a conspicuously young team - have taken flight. The yellow-and-blacks sit on top of a Bundesliga whose reigning champions, Bayern Munich, look a little vulnerable, and have taken up their position of command in a style that makes Dortmund look not only plausible challengers for a league title held since 2013 by Bayern but candidates for the unofficial title of most exhilarating team in Europe’s elite leagues right now. In their last seven games, unbeaten Dortmund have struck no fewer than 28 goals.
They have scored at an average of three per fixture for the whole season so far, a standard they exceeded a week ago with the eye-catching 4-0 walloping of Atletico Madrid in the Uefa Champions League. Yes, Atletico, owners of the continent’s most famously mean defence. “Dortmund are a beautiful team to watch,” said a magnanimous Diego Simeone, the Atletico manager.
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You need to watch Favre’s Dortmund right up until the final whistle, too. Since the edge-of-the-seat comeback at Furth, they have established late goals as a speciality. The dynamic influence of players off the bench is regular endorsement of Favre's uncanny ability to read the progress of a game and decipher what might unlock, or break, a stubborn opponent.
From the bench, striker Paco Alcacer, on loan from Barcelona, has been a sensation: Five matches, only two of them in the starting XI, have yielded eight goals. Sancho, the 18-year-old winger who was prised out of Manchester City’s academy by Dortmund’s offer of regular football with the senior XI, is another super-sub. He had five assists and a goal from his first seven Bundesliga games. More recently, he has also made the most of the starts Favre rewarded him with, setting up a goal in the 4-3 win over Augsburg, scoring in the 4-0 win against Stuttgart, and registering twice at the weekend against Hertha Berlin, when Dortmund were, unusually, pegged back, a late penalty earning Hertha a 2-2 draw.
“We were a little naive at the end,” said Reus of that fixture. The 29-year-old captain regards moments of naivete as the downside of youthful zest. He gees up a team often including two or three players a decade younger than him. Sancho, the full-back Achraf Hakimi, on loan from Real Madrid, and the French defender Dan-Axel Zagadou are in their teens; Christian Pulisic, the gifted USA forward, has just turned 20.
From Favre they gain decades of knowhow. The Swiss, who turns 61 this week, knows the Bundesliga intimately, from his spells at Hertha and Borussia Monchengladbach before he moved to Nice in 2016. He welcomed the opportunity to work with younger players. A busy summer transfer window saw the departure of a number of seasoned Dortmunders, such as Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Gonzalo Castro, Nuri Sahin and Andre Schurrle.
Witsel's arrival, fresh for his bronze medal with Belgium at the World Cup, compensated somewhat, and brought savvy and strength to central midfield. Reus meanwhile links this Dortmund to a glorious recent past, when under Jurgen Klopp, they reached the 2013 Champions League final.
So does Mario Gotze, once the bright hope of German football, now hinting, at 26, he might be coaxed back towards his brilliant best. Gotze, who has suffered injury, illness and a dispiriting spell at Bayern since he scored the goal that won Germany the 2014 World Cup, said at the weekend he feels “100 per cent” again.
And just as there's a defining date on the calendar approaching: Bayern come to Dortmund a week on Saturday.
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Dubai Bling season three
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Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Almnssa
Started: August 2020
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Sectors: Internet, e-commerce
Investments: Grants/private funding
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
