Borussia Dortmund’s Bundesliga finale towards relegated Holstein Kiel should be approached like a ultimate if they’re to say a Champions League place for subsequent season.
That’s the view of head coach Niko Kovac, who’s hoping to cap a outstanding turnaround for the 2023-24 Champions League runners-up with a top-four end.
Winners of six of their final seven league matches, together with final week’s 4-2 victory at Bayer Leverkusen, Dortmund have climbed from eleventh within the desk to fifth and are on 54 factors.
They enter the ultimate recreation of the season one level behind Freiburg in fourth and three behind Eintracht Frankfurt in third.
However with these two groups going through off on the Europa-Park Stadion, Dortmund might be assured a top-four end in the event that they beat Seventeenth-placed Kiel by a minimum of three targets.
“It’s an excellent feeling to be again within the combine however it’s about taking that final step that may generally even be the hardest,” Kovac, who took over in February, mentioned on Thursday.
“Finals are the video games that all of us wish to be a part of. Within the final weeks we had many finals. We needed to win these video games.
“We gained them and now we’re able that we’ve issues in our personal arms. Earlier than we relied on others.”
Forward of the ultimate matchday, the Opta supercomputer offers Dortmund an 83.1% probability of ending fourth and a 16.6% chance of staying in fifth.
The highest 4 groups within the Bundesliga will qualify immediately for the profitable Champions League group section subsequent season.
Failure to qualify would signify a serious monetary blow for the Ruhr valley membership, and Kovac says they’ll merely concentrate on their very own match and shut out noise from elsewhere.
“I gained’t be taking a look at my cellular phone,” Kovac mentioned. “Now we have an necessary recreation, we all know that. So we gained’t change.
“I’m a buddy of retaining issues as they’re so everybody can construct their very own rigidity to ship the efficiency we’d like on Saturday.
“We wish and should win the sport to achieve what all of us dream of. However it is going to be extraordinarily troublesome.”