🌡 Hot Take: Why Dortmund should sell Haaland this summer | OneFootball

There was a Borussia Dortmund before Erling Haaland and there will be a Borussia Dortmund after him.

The best thing the club could do now is move on from the Norwegian as quickly as possible.

After a disappointing 2020/21 season, which could still end on a high, Dortmund will begin a new chapter under Marco Rose in the summer. Why begin it and continue to build the attack around a player who will leave in a year anyway and force yet another rebuild?

Dortmund can get more money for Haaland in 2021 than they will in 2022, when his release clause comes into play. They should take it and look to spend wisely to improve a poorly put together squad.

With the fee they could receive this summer likely to be €150m or more, they could work with Rose to kick a rebuild into action as soon as the current Borussia Mönchengladbach boss takes over.

Reports this week suggested that André Silva has a €30m release clause at Eintracht Frankfurt and, though those claims were denied, a pandemic-hit Eintracht Frankfurt could be brought to the negotiating table by such a sum.

The Portuguese has outscored Haaland in the Bundesliga this season, netting 23 goals to the Norwegian’s 21, and fired Frankfurt into the Champions League places at Dortmund’s expense.

To think, Dortmund could go for him over the coming months, sell Haaland, and still have over €100m left from selling the 20-year-old prodigy.

Tammy Abraham is just another potential alternative. Out of favour at Chelsea with a deal expiring in two years, the west London club would surely listen to an approach worth a fraction of a potential Haaland sale.

Dortmund have a long list of issues to deal with this summer.

The club’s list for this summer is a long one. A new goalkeeper is top of it but a new centre-back will also be a priority, as will a backup left-back. A decision in midfield is needed as Axel Witsel, Thomas Delaney and Mahmoud Dahoud all head into the final year of their contracts.

And goals are also an obvious problem. Haaland and Jadon Sancho aside, no player has scored more than four in the Bundesliga so far this season.

But that doesn’t have to be the case and Dortmund can make the choice to move away from Haaland sooner rather than later before they become even more dependant on him.

The team have scored 101 goals in 45 Bundesliga games since he arrived in January 2020. They netted 103 in the 45 Bundesliga matches leading up to Haaland’s arrival.

Having a striker who guarantees regular goals is obviously a huge boost but a growing reliance on Haaland digging the team out of trouble has arguably even contributed to the team’s struggles since he joined.

And it’s not that the choice is between Haaland and not having a goalscorer, especially when a player like Silva has outdone Haaland in the Bundesliga scoring charts this season and would be available for a fraction of the price.

Dortmund’s greatest hours under Jürgen Klopp were built on the foundation of not having one star more important than the collective, not relying on one player to deliver goals, points, wins, or trophies.

Haaland may have outgrown Dortmund, it’s no accident he is attracting interest from the very biggest clubs in the game, but it could also benefit Dortmund to let him go a year earlier than they actually want to and start their next chapter without him.