The Get-Rich-Quick Scheme That Almost Killed a German Soccer Team

The bombs were ready to detonate when the black-and-yellow bus pulled into L’Arrivée Hotel & Spa, on the outskirts of Dortmund, Germany, on April 11, 2017. The driver, Christian Schulz, had arrived to take the players of Borussia Dortmund, one of the country’s best soccer teams, to their Champions League tournament quarterfinal in nearby Signal Iduna Park. Dortmund was set to play AS Monaco and hoped to move a step closer to Europe’s most prestigious club trophy.

Shortly before 7 p.m., the players climbed aboard the bus. On schedule, Schulz set off on the 15-minute drive to the stadium near the center of Dortmund, a city of 600,000 that’s considered the faded capital of the German rust belt. Matthias Ginter, a soft-spoken 23-year-old center back, settled into a seat in the rear. Since joining the team in 2014, Ginter’s strong play has helped keep it near the top ranks of European soccer. He’d already lived through one of the most traumatic recent moments in the sport. Two years earlier, Ginter was playing in an exhibition match between the German and French national teams in Paris when three suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the stadium, marking the beginning of a terror attack that killed 130 people across the city. He rationalized it as the kind of thing that happens only once in a person’s life.