Roman Bürki moved from BVB to St. Louis City SC in the MLS in 2022. Now he’s being pretty harsh on his old club in an interview.

Roman Bürki is writing a new success story in the US. The Swiss goalkeeper is the undisputed number one at St. Louis City SC and also captain of the team. In 2023, he was voted best goalkeeper in Major League Soccer (MLS), and the 34-year-old is held in high esteem. At Borussia Dortmund, where Bürki spent seven years of his career, the former first-choice goalkeeper was only number two or three after an injury in January 2021. “In hindsight, I think that injury probably played into the hands of the coach at the time, Edin Terzic,” Bürki said in an interview with Spox. “I never really felt the same level of trust with him that I had felt with other coaches before.” Bürki speaks candidly about his demotion in Dortmund. He said he was “totally stunned” at the time: “It hit me hard. On the other hand, sudden dismissals of goalkeepers happen from time to time in soccer.

Someone has to be to blame. If you’re not winning games and the goalkeeper is conceding goal after goal, I would have understood. But that wasn’t the case at that stage. In my opinion, I wasn’t the main reason why things weren’t going well. Even when Marwin Hitz was in goal, things weren’t much better.” When asked if he felt like a scapegoat, he answers “yes.” The goalkeeper also reports receiving a message from a BVB official shortly before the 2021 DFB Cup victory: “Just one week before Marwin’s injury, I was told to look for a new club. So at that point, I no longer felt good enough for BVB. And then I received such an impersonal text message trying to convince me how good I actually am. Of course, I couldn’t take that seriously. It was pretty bizarre that no one thought to go to the training ground and talk to me in person.” Bürki looked for a new club in 2021. He had the chance to move to Atlético Madrid in Spain and become the number two behind Jan Oblak. “Unfortunately, that fell through because of BVB’s transfer fee demands. I had little say in the matter. Dortmund wanted another two million euros for me,” Bürki reports. In 2022, after 233 competitive appearances for BVB, he finally moved to St. Louis on a free transfer. Three years later, his frustration at the way he left Dortmund still seems to linger.