Borussia Dortmund coach Jurgen Klopp has expressed his confidence in his current side’s ability to stay in the Bundesliga and also conveyed that he believes his star players will remain at the club next season, in an interview with the German publication Sport BILD. 

Dortmund are currently in the Bundesliga’s relegation zone after only accumulating 15 points in the opening seventeen matches of the league campaign. While BVB has progressed to the UEFA Champions League Round of 16 as group winners, Klopp’s side has struggled mightily in Germany and a number of his star players are being linked with moves away from Signal Iduna Park (Westfalenstadion).

The likes of Marco Reus, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Ilkay Gundogan have been tipped to leave the club should it not be able to provide Champions League soccer next year. But Klopp is confident his side will stay up next season and refuses to believe his players will defect from the club should they fail to qualify for Europe.

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“I’m not at all interested [in the Champions League],” the BVB coach told Sport BILD. “As things stand right now, I would have no problem just staying up and being able to train a lot next season.”

“If there are any of my players who would rather move somewhere else just because of one year without the Champions League, then clearly I’ve judged them completely wrong.”

“We’ve got seventeen games and we will do it. Seventeen games is a hell of a lot.”

“We’ve now been able to work on so many things that we had no time to go over even once in the summer.”

“We weren’t able to work tactically one single time because the lads first had to get into decent shape.”

Borussia Dortmund’s first match following the winter break will be on January 31 against third-place Bayer 04 Leverkusen.

BVB head into the second half of the season in the bottom two of the Bundesliga, with 12 points to make up from fourth-place Borussia Monchengladbach in order to qualify for the Champions League next season.