Mats Hummels, the German International has made an emotional return to Dortmund in the most humane way possible and at 30 being a defender, he has a long time ahead of him to give it for his club. Hummels has spent his whole career shifting between the two clubs till now and is looking for a good number of years in the Dortmund defence. His number of years donning the International jersey for Germany is a thing to be talked about. Making his debut in 2010, he has got 70 caps for the Die Mannschaft. He has also scored 5 goals in the matches, averaging 1 goal in 14 matches.
A Bayern Munich youth product, Hummels signed his first professional contract on 19 December 2006, keeping him in the club until 2010. In 2008, Hummels was sent out on loan for a year to BVB where he made 14 appearances that season and impressed Klopp who signed him in 2009 for €4 million. He put himself up as a first-choice defender for the team where he partnered Neven Subotic and had the best defensive record in Bundesliga. He won the League twice in 2010-11 and 2011-12 and won the DFB Pokal in 2012. They won the DFL Super Cup in the next two seasons and failed to win anything else as the once set team was being ripped apart by wealthy, glory-hungry teams.
Eventually, Hummels again left for his boyhood club in the 2016-17 season where he won 3 Bundesliga titles one after the another to make his tally 5. He was the first-choice centre back for Bayern in the 3 seasons and on 19th June he was confirmed leaving Bayern to join BVB for € 38.00 million.
Now, as a matter of fact, Borussia Dortmund has a quality set of young centre backs, Manuel Akanji, Abdou Diallo and Dan Axel Zagadou. Hummels being one of the very best defenders in the world would bring a lot of experience and teachings under his sleeve which he can impart to the above three. Last season Akanji and Diallo were the main starters with both starting 70%+ of the matches for The Black and Yellows, but this coming season might see some changes in that section with the introduction of Hummels to the squad. His impressive performance of 1.9 tackles, 1.8 interceptions, 3 clearances, 78 passes per match with close to 90% pass accuracy means he can be a talisman for Lucian Favre while putting the ball from defence upfield.
This also means that Bayern has only two first-choice centre backs at this moment in Niklas Sule and Jerome Boateng, of whom Boateng is 30 as well. They need to sign a centre back in case of any injuries or suspensions to the above two, which can arise at any time. They do not have a backup centre back as well which can cause problems for them in the long run. Looking at the Bayern squad one can understand that they don’t unnecessarily fill their squad up with players and that is why the registered squad size of 2018/19 was 24. Eventually, that’s good, but a team playing on the top level of Europe and playing in 4-5 competitions at the same time needs to have depth in their team, which is lacking in case of Bayern. With the iconic duo of Ribery and Robben leaving, they need to impart more faith in Kingsley Coman and Serge Gnabry, but this duo, even though young lacks the proper experience. Now it’s to see, how Bayern jump back from this situation of understaffing.
