Ousmane Dembélé Embarrasses Manchester United. Dortmund Continues to Dominate the Transfer Market

It would be easy to look at the summer dealings of Borussia Dortmund, Germany's second-biggest club, and assume that they're in trouble. After all, star defender Mats Hummels and pivotal playmakers Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Ilkay Gundogan have all left – to Bayern Munich, Manchester United and Manchester City, respectively.

Yet, somehow, Dortmund is having a strong summer in the market. Namely because they got this guy.

RIP Marcos Rojo. 1990-2016 — Dortmund America (@DortmundAmerica)July 22, 2016

That's Ousmane Dembele, faking two Manchester United players out of the gym with the dirtiest ankle-breaker crossovers we've seen since Allen Iverson went to Turkey. Dembele is 19. He's French, although of Malian descent. And Dortmund got the right winger from Rennes for a hilariously reasonable 15 million euros, when just about the entire Champions League field wanted him.

Yet that's hardly all. Dortmund also got Mario Goetze back from Bayern. He was, for a time, the best young number 10 in the game and scored the winning goal in the World Cup final two summers ago when he was 22. But he atrophied at Bayern, never quite fitting into the false 9 role under Pep Guardiola and losing out to regular 9 Robert Lewandowski, playing a mere 14 league games last seasons.

Goetze only just turned 24 last month and Dortmund paid 11 million euros less this summer than the 37 million they received for him two summers ago.

But wait, says the infomercial salesman, there's more! Dortmund landed Marc Bartra, the underused center back from Barcelona, and on Thursday inked Chelsea flameout Andre Schurrle, who is really a very solid winger, from Wolfsburg. Then there are the acquisitions of defender Raphael Geurreiro, midfielders Mikel Merino and Sebastian Rode, and forward Emre Mor, who are 22, 20, 25 and 18, respectively and all highly regarded.

Dortmund has always done a good job of reloading when stars have left. And plenty have come back when things haven't worked out elsewhere, like Nuri Sahin, who returned from Real Madrid and Liverpool; Shinji Kagawa, who never found his place with Manchester United; and now Goetze. But this summer might be the club's finest transfer work yet. The towering transfer fees of the departing players have meant that, to this point, the above haul has cost Die Borussen just 7 million euros more than they've taken in. They may have improved significantly – if not in the short term than almost certainly in the long – on a team that ended up 10 points back of Bayern, but 18 points ahead of third-place Bayer Leverkusen.

Meanwhile, manager Thomas Tuchel's well-drilled team retains perhaps the most dangerous striker in Europe in Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and has surrounded him with a young core with an enormous upside.

Oh, and 17-year-old United States midfielder Christian Pulisic, who will have to work that much harder to see the field this year.