German football club Borussia Dortmund were greeted by 500-strong enthusiastic fan as they arrived at Singapore’s Changi Airport Terminal 3 on Tuesday evening. The fans came prepared with homemade signs, sporting memorabilia and mobile phones to snap photos of their footballing idols such as Marco Reus, Mats Hummels, Emre Can and Donyell Malen.
According to the club, although captain Reus is injured, he will still travel with the squad and may have some individual training during their tour in Southeast Asia. The club will face 2021 Singapore Premier League champions Lion City Sailors at 8.30pm on 24 Nov at the Jalan Besar Stadium. Tickets for this match are sold-out. There will be a Celebrity Challenge curtain-raiser at 6.45pm before the main event.
After their match against Sailors, Dortmund will travel by bus to Johor Bahru to take on the Johor Southern Tigers on 28 Nov and will fly to Vietnam for a match against their national team two days later.
Other players not travelling with the squad due to injury and illness are Marius Wolf, Tom Rothe, Mo Dahoud, Jamie Bynoe-Gittens, Anthony Modeste, Mateu Morey and Sebastien Haller. Eleven players are also unavailable for this trip as they are representing their country at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Dortmund will also be having other activities during their stay in Singapore. On the morning of matchday, they will conduct a coaching clinic with coaches from Football Association of Singapore and Sport Singapore.
“Dortmund’s five-day tour to Singapore will witness so much more than just a football match. It will present us with opportunities for a rich professional exchange in the facets of sports science, football medicine, video analysis, as well as digital marketing and fan engagement, and even a chance to contribute to the local community,” said Sailors CEO Chew Chun-Liang in September when announcing details of the match between the two clubs.
The five-time Bundesliga champions will have a community engagement programme on Saturday morning, after which they will have a meet-and-greet with fans at the PUMA flagship store in Somerset from 11am to 1230pm.
Below are Borussia Dortmund squad for the 2022 Asia Tour:
6 Salih Özcan, 11 Marco Reus, 14 Nico Schulz, 15 Mats Hummels, 21 Donyell Malen, 23 Emre Can, 30 Felix Passlack, 33 Alexander Meyer, 35 Marcel Lotka, 34 Jayden Braaf, 37 Lion Semic, 39 Prince Aning, 40 Julian Rijkhoff, 41 Nnamdi Collins, 42 Göktan Gürpüz, 44 Soumaila Coulibaly, 45 Guille Bueno, 46 Marco Pasalic, 47 Antonios Papadoupolus, 48 Samuel Bamba, 49 Justin Njinmah, 54 Can Özkan, 55 Falko Michel, 56 Ole Pohlmann, 57 Moritz Broschinski