How Big Is Borussia Dortmund’s Loss of Injured Goalkeeper Roman Burki?

Borussia Dortmund celebrated an important win in perhaps their biggest game of the first half of the 2016/17 season on Saturday, beating perennial Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich 1-0 in front of their own fans at the Westfalenstadion.

The victory came at a price, however, with the Black and Yellows announcing on their official website on Sunday evening that goalkeeper Roman Burki suffered a broken hand in the game.

The Switzerland international will have to undergo surgery and “will not be available for BVB for all the games up to the end of the year.”

The 26-year-old played through the injury against the Bavarians—it is unclear when it occurred—keeping his fifth clean sheet of the season and a third in the last four meetings against Bayern across all competitions.

Burki has made a big step forward in his second season after an up-and-down maiden campaign in the Ruhr valley following his move from SC Freiburg in the summer of 2015.

In his first year at the club, he visibly struggled with the change from getting bombarded with shots for a team fighting for Bundesliga survival to only seeing action two or three times in many games. He developed into a more consistent ‘keeper during that first season and made more strides at the start of the current campaign.

Head coach Thomas Tuchel noted those improvements in a press conference ahead of the meeting with Freiburg in September, per Dortmund-based writer Stefan Buczko:

Tuchel on Bürki: “He doesn’t feel like the Freiburg keeper playing for Dortmund anymore, but as goalkeeper of Borussia Dortmund.” #bvbscf

— Stefan Buczko (@StefanBuczko) September 22, 2016

Having grown as a personality, Burki proved an important anchor in a BVB side that suffered from near-constant changes to the defensive personnel because of an injury crisis earlier in the season.

He has not made a big mistake leading to a goal for the opposition all season and put together arguably the best performance of his career in a 5-1 win over VfL Wolfsburg, also in September. The scoreline notwithstanding, Burki was clearly the man of the match.

Whether it was his tightening of angles in one-on-ones, flying saves against shots from range or a magnificent double stop against Julian Draxler and Mario Gomez, Burki saved his …

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