Paco Alcacer: The missing piece in the puzzle

Less than 24 hours before Paco Alcacer had put Dortmund 3-0 up away at VfB Stuttgart with a delightful chip over the goalkeeper, there seemed to have been more good news for fans of a black and yellow persuasion – but from Barcelona rather than Baden-Württemberg.

"Borussia Dortmund have already informed us that they will be making use of their option to buy Paco Alcacer," announced Barcelona chief executive Oscar Grau at the Catalan club's annual general meeting.

Confirmation, seemingly, that BVB had committed to pay the €21 million ($24.1m) plus €5m in potential bonuses to keep the 25-year-old Spaniard at the Westfalenstadion beyond his current one-year loan deal. But it was news to Michael Zorc.

"We haven't spoken to the player himself yet," the 56-year-old BVB sporting director said ahead of kick-off in Stuttgart. "Although there's nothing to say we won't, to be honest. It's looking good at the moment."

"Looking good" is an understatement. Since swapping the Mediterranean coast for Germany's industrial Ruhr, Alcacer's form defies description. The numbers speak for themselves:

Seven Bundesliga goals in just 109 minutes – a league record. Eight goals in five games in all competitions in only two starts, including a sensational 37-minute hat-trick against Augsburg.

That's a goal every 18 minutes, compared to every 154 minutes at Barcelona, every 208 minutes at Valencia and every 236 minutes at Getafe. Add his three strikes for Spain during the last international break, and that makes it 11 in just 36 days. The headline of Monday's Kicker magazine said it all: "Who is this man who can't stop scoring?" 

Read more: Bundesliga Bulletin: Bayern bounce back, BVB lethal, Schalke toothless

The missing piece

"We hoped it would work out," said Zorc. "But we never dreamt that he'd excel like this."

So far, Alcacer has proven to be a perfect fit – the missing piece in the new Dortmund jigsaw. As the summer transfer window drew to a close, BVB had done good business in midfield with Axel Witsel and Thomas Delaney joining, but doubts remained as to whether they were sufficiently well-stocked up front.

Captain Marco Reus is a proven performer but wasted alone up top and Max Philipp, signed from Freiburg, isn't an out-an-out striker either. Neither is Jadon Sancho or Jacub Bruun-Larsen, and no-one could have predicted that the two youngsters would perform so well at this level anyway. But Dortmund were patient.

"We're taking our time," said CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke. "In the last ten days of the transfer window, someone always comes onto the market who wasn't available before."

And so it proved, as Dortmund struck gold with Alacer, not a classic number nine in the German tradition of Miroslav Klose or Mario Gomez – or even Robert Lewandowski, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang or Michy Batshuayi – but a player who is just as dangerous in the build-up as he is when finishing in the box. Not a player who looks to beat his marker one-on-one but whose intelligent movement means he doesn't need to beat them at all.

"It's fun to play with a player like Alcacer because he comes towards you and demands to get involved with the combinations," former BVB player and Spanish football expert Gerhard Poschner writes in Kicker. "Only then does he make his way into the box to score his goals; he doesn't just wait around for the ball to come to him."

'He can feel football'

His relaxed, easy-going demeanor fits this new-look Dortmund dressing room too. The club have acted sensitively but still sold players who still carried the inevitable psychological scars of the Monaco bus attack. In their place, Witsel, Delaney, Sancho, Philipp and Bruun Larsen, along with Abdou Diallo, Marius Wolf and Achraf Hakimi, have brought a fresher, younger dynamic to the Westfalenstadion, held together by the glue which is captain Reus.

Alcacer's footballing relationship with Reus is plain to see, but the two get on off the pitch as well. "Marco has helped me a lot since I've been here," Alcacer said. "I have him to thank that I've settled in so quickly."

Alcacer is tailor-made for this team and for Lucien Favre, who has Dortmund playing slick, offensive football with the ball on the ground. "He can feel football," the Swiss coach said of his new striker. "He's always exactly where a striker should be."

On Wednesday night, that will likely be in the starting eleven as Dortmund look to maintain their 100 per cent Champions League record against Alcacer's compatriots from Atletico Madrid.

And if he continues his current form, it won't be long before Michael Zorc really does trigger that option to buy.