"That's actually impossible": A BVB transfer flop leaves Sven Mislintat stunned

Immobile moved from Torino to Dortmund in 2014 for a transfer fee of €18.5 million, where he was expected to fill some big shoes. Mislintat was head scout at the Black and Yellows at the time and recalled: “When we sold Robert Lewandowski in 2014, we adopted a different recruitment philosophy for the first time in our search for his replacement. We signed Ciro Immobile, the Serie A top scorer, in an attempt to play it safe. He performed sensationally in Italy both before and after that – but he didn’t work out at all for us. That’s actually impossible when you see him scoring goals.”

At the time, BVB were still managed by Jürgen Klopp and had reached the Champions League final the year before. Dortmund generally focused on signing young, promising players at that time. But when striker Lewandowski moved to Bayern on a free transfer, the aforementioned paradigm shift took place.

"We lost Lewy and thought: 'Well, we’ll just have to bring in someone who leaves us with nothing to be criticised for,'" explained Mislintat. "In the same year, Sadio Mané moved from Salzburg to Southampton. We’d had our eye on him too, but we ended up signing a top scorer from a top-five league rather than from the somewhat weaker Austrian league."

Mané flourished at the Saints, moved to Liverpool in 2016 and, under Klopp – who was now in charge there – became one of Europe’s best strikers. Mislintat said: “According to our tried-and-tested strategy, we should have signed Sadio. Which is what we did again later with players like Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Ousmane Dembélé.”

Mislintat’s conclusion: “Even though many people believe it: you can’t buy certainty.”

Immobile stayed at Borussia for just one year. He struggled to adapt to Dortmund’s style of play and the pace of the Bundesliga, failed to find his scoring touch, and never really gelled with his teammates. This was reflected, among other things, in his famous remark that, during his first eight months in Dortmund, “not a single teammate had invited him round for dinner”. And anyway: “The Germans are cold; there’s nothing you can do about it.”

The striker therefore moved to Sevilla FC on loan in 2015, and a year later the Andalusians signed him permanently for eleven million euros. Immobile, who has been Serie A’s top scorer four times and won the Golden Boot for Europe’s top scorer in 2020, went on to play for Torino, Lazio and Besiktas, among others. The 2021 European champion has been playing for Paris FC since January 2026.