The reinvention of Edin Terzic: ‘Life is painful sometimes – but pain doesn't have to be negative'

New York Times

a day ago

A year ago, in June 2024, Edin Terzic stood on the Wembley pitch at the end of the Champions League final and watched his Borussia Dortmund players take their curtain call.
Dortmund had lost 2-0 but produced a stirring run on their way to London, knocking out both Atletico Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain, before taking Real Madrid to their limit in that June 2024 showpiece with a performance of heart and soul.
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But just a few weeks later, Terzic was gone. Believing he had taken the club as far as he could, he resigned as head coach and retreated into the background. Nobody really knows what happened next or what he has been doing since.
'First, I went on holiday,' he tells The Athletic, laughing gently, over the phone.
'I understood that I have different roles in my life. If you are a manager, it's very intense and demanding, and you have to say no to a lot in life. But I enjoyed the days where I could say yes — to my kids, to my wife; to my mom, my brother and my friends.'
'So, I travelled the world with my family and enjoyed my time with them, but when school started, I began to work again.
'I had questions to answer. How can I improve? What and who do I need to do that?'
Terzic is someone with whom you can talk about football in rich, dense detail. He can speak about how to build attacking moves and construct defensive systems. What the right level of constructive tension is needed in a team environment. Or how a side needs to change the pitch of its attack to cater to the strengths of different types of forwards.
Dortmund was a difficult situation to emerge from. Terzic, now 42, was born in the region and grew up as a BVB fan in nearby Menden. He first started working for the club in 2010, as an assistant coach with the under-19s, and even though he had spells away from the club, it was the end of a significant part of his life.
There were other challenges. For much of the last decade, Dortmund have been one of European football's finishing schools, where future greats pause before stepping up to the very top of the sport. Terzic coached the first team, combining his interim and permanent appointments, for two and a half years, during which time he managed Jadon Sancho, Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham.
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The virtue was that his teams were powered by their talent. The curse was that when those players were sold, Dortmund and Terzic had to adapt tactically to a new talisman, meaning that the team's identity during that period was temporary and invariably a reflection of those individuals and their strengths.
But Terzic won the DFB-Pokal, the German Cup, in 2021. Were it not for a devastating final day 2-2 draw with Mainz, he would have won the Bundesliga in 2023. And, of course, he came unexpectedly close to becoming a European champion 12 months ago.
'All the players were brilliant — even if we didn't win the final,' says Terzic. 'It's always difficult to talk about yourself but one of my strengths is that I can convince people around me of our common path.'
Another strength, perhaps, was creating systems that allowed attacking talent to flourish. Haaland played outstandingly for Terzic and so did Bellingham. Having excelled under Terzic before leaving for Manchester United in 2021, Sancho returned on loan in 2024 and quickly returned to form.
The catch was that those Dortmund teams often bore the characteristics of the players, rather than the coach's own tactical identity. That has been the impetus of much of his work since leaving — the focus, this time, has been on Edin Terzic.
'The first thing back in August was to build my new staff,' says the German-Croatian. 'I met many people, from inside the business and from outside, and got involved in conversations about leadership and improvement.
'It was about building not only for the next chapter but beyond that because every time you change clubs, there's going to be a natural change. So, I met many people who are now just one phone call away, wherever I go and whenever it starts.
'Because you never know. Somebody might have just become a father, somebody might want to be a head coach (instead of an assistant) or somebody wants to be in a different country altogether. I needed a good list of people, so I spent many, many days and hours talking to people to get a good feeling about them. Not only about their skills but also their characteristics.
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'How can they help me on the pitch? How can they help me off the pitch?'
This is very much who Terzic is. A serious, searching person.
In May 2024, The Athletic spoke to important people from his past, with preparation emerging as a major theme. Professor Peter Lange, under whom Terzic studied for his coaching qualifications at the Ruhr University Bochum, described him as 'conscientious' and 'diligent', adding that 'football was — and still — his absolute focus. His work was meticulous.'
And while Terzic is a private person, it will surprise nobody who knows him that he has spent the last year challenging his own thinking. There is that deference about him. As if, without a glittering playing career on his CV, he must pay his dues through study.
'I met maybe 10 to 15 really experienced managers in the past year,' he says. 'Not only from this generation but the one before and the one before that. I don't want to name them in public, but I just wanted to learn from their experience
'When fans watch, say, All or Nothing on Amazon Prime, they get to see the coaches working, but when I'm working in my office, I have questions that nobody can answer other than the people who have sat there too and who have been through it: questions about communication, about speaking to owners and to media.
'How often should you interrupt a player's holiday? How often should you call them when they're on international duty? How often should you change your staff? How do you interact with supporters and members? What are the toughest conflicts that you've ever been through?'
This is the searching part of Terzic's personality.
Resilience is another. Like everyone else at Dortmund, Terzic remains bruised by what happened against Mainz at the end of the 2022-23 Bundesliga season, when Bayern snatched the title on goal difference, but, in time, that seems to have become an energising memory. A valuable reference point, rather than a wound.
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'Of course, Mainz is still painful,' he says. 'It's always painful — but then life is painful sometimes and it doesn't need to be negative. It can be a motivation.'
'The final is a difficult memory, too. On the other hand, to have been there, to have beaten Atletico Madrid, and to have beaten Paris Saint-Germain twice without conceding a goal. That is something that I'm really proud of.
'So, it's not only the pain — there's also the belief that I can take to the next stages of my career.'
That next stage will happen when the opportunity appears. There have been chances in England, Italy and Turkey, but none have been quite right and he has been happy to wait.
Terzic is a constructor. He wants to build a team, not just pick one, and he has spent the last year quietly turning the page.