BVB loaned Cole Campbell to TSG 1899 Hoffenheim in the winter, believing the 20-year-old would get more playing time there. But the exact opposite has turned out to be the case."Yes, that’s the goal. Full stop," Lars Ricken made clear recently in the WAZ. The sporting director announced that Borussia Dortmund will be looking to sign a quick attacking winger during the upcoming summer transfer window.In purely theoretical terms, Ricken and his team wouldn’t need to look too far afield. Data on the club’s own squad shows that both Cole Campbell and Julien Duranville are under contract with BVB until 2028.Both youngsters, currently on loan, are lightning-fast and good at dribbling. They fit the profile they are looking for. Yet Ricken has not considered them. In Duranville’s case, this would be a shame; after all, the 19-year-old Belgian possesses immense talent. Like Campbell, he only joined a new club this winter and has made eleven appearances for FC Basel so far.With Campbell, who is 20 years old and under contract with TSG 1899 Hoffenheim until the end of the season, the situation is entirely different. The American has accumulated a meagre 323minutes of playing time so far this season, spread across seven appearances in the Bundesliga, 3. Liga and Regionalliga West. It has now turned into a nightmare year for the young talent – and at a disastrous stage in his career. Campbell, who made his debut for Dortmund’s first team last year during the wave of injuries under Nuri Sahin, is an ambitious lad. He wanted more quickly, and when he realised that Sahin’s successor, Niko Kovac, had different priorities, Campbell wanted nothing more than to leave.Kovac is therefore said to have advised Campbell to leave the club. That was just one of a conspicuously large number of rumours that accompanied Campbell’s summer, whilst he was on holiday in his hometown of Houston following the Club World Cup – where he didn’t play a single minute – and fell ill with food poisoning.VfB Stuttgart and Eintracht Frankfurt were said to be keen on Campbell. In each case, the transfer was reportedly imminent. There was talk of a fairly high transfer fee of seven million euros and of BVB preferring to loan him out abroad.In the end, it was the Kraichgau region in early January. The loan deal is reportedly structured so that the fee for Hoffenheim drops to zero euros the more often Campbell plays. “He has high expectations of himself and was unhappy with his current role. That is another reason why we agreed to this loan and believe that he will get more playing time at TSG in the second half of the season than he has recently had with us,” said BVB sporting director Sebastian Kehl at Campbell’s farewell.The big ‘but’: he has currently made a mere 25 minutes of appearances for the first team in the Bundesliga. Whether Hoffenheim will therefore exercise the included purchase option for the left-footed player, which is said to amount to around seven million euros plus bonuses, is highly doubtful.All of this is linked to Campbell’s difficult start at TSG. Whilst the club had hoped that the loan would help them prepare for the likely summer departure of key player Bazoumana Toure and put Campbell through his paces during this trial period, the two-time U23 international picked up an injury very quickly.Add GOAL.com as a preferred source on Google to see more of our reporting"With Cole, the idea is clear: we wanted to have that Toure-style player again this year. One of Cole’s strengths is his pace," head coach Christian Ilzer had also confirmed after the transfer. But then Campbell’s long-standing ankle problems took their toll. In the end, they cost him seven league matches, and he was sidelined for over a month."Cole was injured for a long time; it wasn’t an easy situation for him. You arrive at a new club with big ambitions, wanting to prove your worth, and then you’re sidelined for a long time," said Ilzer at the end of February, though he also noted at the time that the American’s progress was "heading in the right direction".A week later, Campbell was named in the TSG squad for the first time. In the 0-1 defeat against St. Pauli, Ilzer promptly brought him on in the 86th minute. After sitting on the bench for two full 90-minute matches, he was at least allowed to play 21 minutes in the 0-5 debacle against Leipzig. He then racked up three times that amount of playing time just two days later in the reserves’ 0-1 defeat to Osnabrück in the 3. Liga. It was Campbell’s second consecutive start for the second team. He had already started the previous week against Stuttgart and was substituted at half-time.Particularly when compared directly to Duranville – who didn’t immediately become a regular starter at Basel but has featured in the starting line-up for six out of eleven matches and has already been involved in two goals – the question arises regarding Campbell: why did he go to Hoffenheim in the first place?After all, Ilzer’s side – barring Friday’s 5-0 defeat to Leipzig – is the surprise package of the league. They don’t play in Europe there, so there isn’t much rotation. And for the Austrian coach, there is certainly little reason to constantly reshuffle his successful team. Especially not in attack, which scores an average of more than two goals per game and where Campbell consistently outshines Toure, a rival at least two leagues above him.  At BVB, Campbell is said to have been deeply disappointed by how much his own prospects deteriorated following his contract extension in the summer of 2024. Dortmund are said to have promised him, among other things, a key role at the Club World Cup in his home country. But that dream was shattered – in much the same brutal way as his hopes of representing the senior national team at the upcoming World Cup have now been dashed.Waldemar Anton: BVB statistics