Newcastle striker Alexander Isak can show Borussia Dortmund just how far he has come

One of elite football’s most lauded business models comes to Newcastle on Wednesday evening, entitled to proudly survey its record as a nursery for talent but concerned about how far that can take a club up the hierarchy of the modern game.

Last May, Borussia Dortmund came within goal difference of ending the longest run of domestic titles in any major European league, Bayern Munich’s 11 successive Bundesligas. Now, Dortmund find themselves bottom of their Champions League group.

Their bad luck is to have been planted in the toughest of the first-phase pools. As Dortmund’s in-form attacking midfielder, Julian Brandt, noted of Group F, headed by Newcastle United, “this group is so wild, anything can happen”. Exhibit one: Newcastle 4, Paris Saint-Germain 1, on match day two, a result that stunned the seeded French club, who on Wednesday take on seven-time European Cup winners AC Milan.

What is quite liable to happen, by the time all the group’s clashes of established – and aspiring – heavyweights are played out is that a former Dortmunder will have had an influence on who ends up in a qualifying spot. On Wednesday, the chance is Alexander Isak’s.

Isak joined Dortmund in early 2017, a tall, wiry teenager nimble on the ball and scouted in his native Sweden for his high potential as a centre-forward. The interest from Dortmund was attractive. Here was a suitor with an excellent reputation for nurturing young attacking talent.

He joined during a productive period for Dortmund’s well-run recruitment department. A young American named Christian Pulisic had recently been elevated to the first-team squad, Dortmund having brought him across the Atlantic at 16 years old. In the previous transfer window, Ousmane Dembele had arrived,