Back on Top: Borussia Dortmund's Perfect Start Exorcises the Ghosts of 2023

There are moments etched into Borussia Dortmund's collective memory that the club would rather forget, and May 2023 sits near the top of the list. As Andy Brassell writes in The Guardian, the last time Dortmund topped the Bundesliga table, black and yellow 'Deutschmeister' t-shirts — declaring them masters of Germany — were already on sale on the approach to Signal Iduna Park, with cold beers at the ready. Then the dream imploded, and the shirts became souvenirs of a collapse rather than a celebration. That painful chapter is no longer the most recent occasion of Dortmund leading the pack. Niko Kovac's side have opened the new Bundesliga campaign with a perfect record — four games, four wins — and Saturday night's hard-fought single-goal victory at Stuttgart was enough to lift them back to the summit of German football. The trip to Stuttgart carried the gravitas of a genuine Topspiel, German football's marquee Saturday night fixture, even if it lacked the entertainment value usually associated with one. This was a match stamped with Kovac's fingerprints: disciplined, controlled and utterly effective. Dortmund did not need to be spectacular; they needed to be resilient, and they were. The tactical conversation surrounding Kovac will not go away anytime soon. His pragmatic, results-first philosophy continues to invite debate over whether it fits with Dortmund's swashbuckling, front-foot identity — the attacking DNA that helped make the club one of Europe's most beloved. Yet as Brassell notes, this performance was a case in point of just how good the Croatian has been for both the club and the team since taking charge. There is a note of caution, of course. As the original report acknowledges, it is probably a stretch to call BVB genuine title contenders on the basis of four matches. The Bundesliga is a marathon that punishes those who peak in autumn. But for a club still scarred by 2023, the symbolism of sitting top — and doing it with a 100% record — is far from trivial. It signals a mentality shift, a team learning to win ugly when the occasion demands it. With the FIFA World Cup 2026 looming on the horizon, sustained domestic form carries added weight. Players performing at this level in a World Cup season place themselves squarely in the conversation for national team consideration next summer in North America, adding another layer of incentive to Dortmund's strong start. For now, though, Dortmund supporters can simply enjoy a view they have not had from the top of the Bundesliga in more than two years. This time, nobody is printing the t-shirts early.